Freedom of speech in Florida, with respect and appreciation to Norman Rockwell. (Illustration: AI for Silverberg4Florida/ChatGPT)
April 13, 2026 by David Silverberg, candidate for Florida Senate, District 28
Most people don’t know this but until now America had a secret superpower.
That superpower was the relationship of its federal, state and local governments.
They were like the three legs of a stool, each one contributing to the strength of the whole. Each one could provide support for the others and fill in if gaps appeared.
This was especially true when it came to disasters and nowhere more so than in Florida.
If a local government couldn’t cope with a disaster—like a hurricane—then the state government could step in. If the state government needed assistance, it could count on the federal government. Each form of government, by being autonomous and making its own decisions, by functioning in a democratic fashion according to law, and by cooperating together, created a remarkably strong whole that served the needs of all the people, especially in emergencies or under duress.
Until now.
Unfortunately, the stool has been broken. At the federal level Donald Trump bullies and threatens all other governments in his quest for complete domination and dictatorial power.
In Florida a governor seeking to rule in the Trump mold, an ambitious, ideologically-driven attorney general, a rapacious chief financial officer and an extremist legislature are waging war on “home rule,” the ability of town, city and county governments to make their own decisions.
Overruling home rule is usually called “preemption,” in the sense that state government preempts local government powers and takes decisionmaking out of their hands.
I call it “Big Tallahassee”—and it’s been going on far too long.
If elected state Senator from the 28th District, the area including Collier and Hendry counties and the Lee County area east of Route 75, I intend to do everything I can to protect, strengthen and respect local governments, not just in my district, but in all of Florida.
We just had an example of Big Tallahassee bullying right here in the 28th District; the state took away the City of Naples’ power over the airport within its city limits. The city will no longer name the commissioners on the airport’s board. Instead, they’ll be elected by the surrounding county.
This was proposed in House Bill 4005 by Florida House Rep. Adam Botana (R-80-Estero), whose district doesn’t include the City of Naples. He had no relationship to the airport. He just decided to strip the Naples city council of its authority and the rest of the Republican legislature and the governor went along with it. Naples’ desires were simply ignored and overridden.
(Botana is being challenged this year by Meg Titcomb, whose website, VoteMegTitcomb.com, will soon be operational.)
Other examples of Big Tallahassee overreach are passage and enactment of bills preempting local governments from planning land use changes after disasters (Senate Bill (SB) 180, 2025), stopping local governments from trying to reduce harmful environmental emissions (Committee Substitute (CS) /House Bill (HB) 1217, 2026), prohibiting local governments from using non-gasoline power tools (SB 290, 2026), or from seeking diversity in hiring decisions (CS/CS/SB 1134, 2026).
Big Tallahassee even stopped local governments from mandating heat breaks for workers (CS/CS/HB 433, 2024)—and that’s really saying something in Florida’s sunbaked fields. I swear, Big Tallahassee would have denied water to Jesus on the way to Calvary.
I’m not the only one saying this. On Sunday, April 12, in the Naples Daily News, in an op-ed titled “Naples is losing its constitutional right to local control,” authors Gregory Fowler and Stacy Vermylen pointed out that, “Taken together, these actions point to a clear shift. Home rule is no longer functioning as a broad constitutional right. It is becoming a shrinking space in which cities can act only where the state ban has not yet intervened.”
Even legislation with relatively benign intent, like the Live Local Act, which was introduced and shepherded to passage by Sen. Kathleen Passidomo in 2023, has preemptive provisions—prompting the Sarasota County Commission to challenge it in court.
So far, these preemptions have had three overall purposes. The first is to end home rule and strip local governments of the power to make land use decisions, like determining their own zoning and preserving the natural environment.
The reason for this is simple and obvious: developers, their legislative puppets (and in many cases legislators who are also land speculators, realtors and developers themselves) don’t want any interference as they pursue profits by paving over Florida. They truly don’t care what we local residents want, think or need.
A second purpose is to prevent any effort to prepare for the effects of climate change. Big Tallahassee, following Donald Trump’s dictates, denies that climate change exists. But it’s not enough that they themselves deny it, they want to force everyone else to deny it and ignore it—and this particularly means crippling local governments that are more alert, aware and awake to the dangers climate change presents.
Nowhere is this truer than in Collier County, part of the 28th Senate District I’m running to represent. With its over 20 miles of shoreline along the Gulf of Mexico, Collier County’s beaches are ailing and eroding, after being battered by repeated hurricanes, sea level rise and salt water intrusion.
But if Collier County ever tried to change its zoning or planning in order to cope with this, it would be stopped by Big Tallahassee.
The third reason for preemption is to aid Donald Trump’s efforts to turn back the clock to fossil fuel use and stop any kind of renewable energy. Trump is insisting on fossil fuels, fossil wars, fossil pollution and fossil costs—no doubt to pour fossil cash into his own pockets.
Big Tallahassee is completely on board with this. What else are we to make of a law that prohibits local governments from requiring use of electric leaf blowers or any other non-gasoline landscaping equipment to tend its lawns? Big Tallahassee is seeking a new Florida fossil age and it’s trying to send all of us the way of the dinosaurs.
It’s time we were no longer led by dinosaurs with fossilized thinking.
If elected to the Florida Senate I intend to do everything I can to preserve, protect and defend the integrity and autonomy of our local governments.
I can’t say I’ll be able to stop all preemption but I can certainly say that I’ll be on the look out for it. I’ll fight it any way and any time that I see it. I want the people of Florida to have a say in how they’re governed; that’s just Democracy 101.
When it comes to the City of Naples, I will certainly explore ways to rescind HB 4005.
The next assault on home rule will come in a special session of the legislature that is likely to be held in the coming weeks. In that session Gov. Ron DeSantis and his cohorts will attempt to end property taxes.
They’re painting this effort as an anti-tax way to improve affordability for Floridians. But that’s because they don’t dare criticize the real reason Floridians are in an affordability crisis—Donald Trump’s wars, tariffs and mismanagement of the economy.
So don’t buy their bull: it’s a trap and a con—and another assault on home rule and Florida’s local governments.
If property taxes are eliminated, local governments will be starved for revenue along with the policemen, firemen and school teachers they employ. Local services—think of your water supplies and sewerage, repairs to roads and bridges, even things like marriage and business licenses—will be crippled. Public schools, already under assault by Big Tallahassee, will be further damaged.
What is more, ending property taxes will only mean that everyday Floridians will ultimately pay more, adding to their affordability woes. The revenue lost by ending property taxes will need to be made up somehow. That will likely be in the form of sales taxes. Those taxes will hit everyday Floridians hard, while billionaires with huge mansions taking up large tracts of property will get off Scott-free and avoid paying their fair share to support the services and facilities that make their lavish lifestyles possible.
Ending property taxes is a bad idea hatched by Big Tallahassee to crush home rule and local governments. Floridians should fight it and I certainly intend to do so.
America’s strength has always been in its local governments where people have the most say. We shouldn’t let Big Tallahassee bully and order our towns around. If elected, I can’t promise a perfect outcome—but I can certainly promise a vigorous effort.
Florida should be run by and for Floridians; not developers, not speculators, not dinosaurs—and certainly not for the convenience and profit of Big Tallahassee.
I hope you agree and you’ll join me in this fight. Please volunteer and donate and in November vote for David Silverberg for state Senate from District 28.
April 8, 2026 by David Silverberg, candidate for Florida Senate, District 28
Like every Floridian, I’m being squeezed from above and below.
The “above” is the price I’m paying at the grocery checkout and fuel pump because of insane presidential decisions by Donald Trump: a war started without my knowledge or consent; gas prices skyrocketing because of his bad planning and lack of forethought; ridiculous tariffs that are turned on and off like a light switch, prompted by his whims and rages.
It’s not just me saying this. Sean Snaith, the Director of the Institute for Economic Forecasting at the University of Central Florida told an Orange County Commission meeting yesterday, April 7, that the “biggest cloud of uncertainty” facing Florida’s economy is the Iran war. Just as people were recovering from a previous round of inflation, “now here we go again with some costs of living being impacted by the conflict here with Iran.” Snaith said.
“The impact we’ve seen immediately [is] certainly at the gas pumps. We’ve seen it in the price of oil, price of natural gas. We’re starting to see it work its way through the economy, these higher prices,” he said, noting that all forms of transportation have already been hit, with everything from airlines raising their baggage fees to delivery companies adding fuel charges for shipping packages.
Thanks a lot, Donnie!
The “below” is the cost imposed by Gov. Ron DeSantis and an extremist Republican legislature—what I’m going to call “Big Tallahassee” from now on— driving up the prices of everything that we all need to live.
It’s not as though I’m living extravagantly or using hundred-dollar bills to light cigars. I’m trying to be frugal and sensible and keep my expenses within limits. Every other Floridian I know is trying to do the same.
But Big Tallahassee sees the everyday Floridian as its enemy and is doing everything it can to make us all poorer, sicker and sadder. It’s waging war on the state’s economy and every Floridian’s wallet.
Big Tallahassee’s war against all immigrants, whether documented or not, is bleeding Florida of the critical labor it needs for construction, farms and basic services at reasonable costs. That means higher prices in the grocery cart and just about every other business activity.
Big Tallahassee’s refusal to face climate change and help Floridians prepare for the worst that can happen is driving up insurance rates at the very time that we need more helpful insurance we can rely upon.
Big Tallahassee won’t face climate reality so living in Florida becomes riskier and more dangerous every year and insurance companies either leave the state, charge higher premiums or fail to pay out when the worst happens. And in its last session, Big Tallahassee batted away all Democratic proposals to relieve or help homeowners cope with what is increasingly becoming a crushing burden.
Even if new insurers have entered the state, there’s no telling if new mom-and-pop insurance companies will be able to pay out in the event of a disaster—and their newness and small sizes lead them to charge higher premiums, putting another burden on Florida policyholders.
On top of all this, Big Tallahassee’s hatred of foreigners and Donald Trump’s threats, insults and attacks on the rest of the world are driving away the international tourists and seasonal residents who pumped money into Florida’s economy.
So Floridians are being crushed by these two sides of a fiscal vise.
I am determined to do everything I can to end this squeeze if I’m elected to the Florida Senate from District 28.
There was a time when life in Florida was not only affordable, it was inexpensive. It’s what brought retirees and lots of other new arrivals to the state. It made possible a reasonably comfortable lifestyle to those of less than extravagant means. It also created a prosperous middle class and let immigrants start businesses and flourish, lifting everyone.
But now, Trump’s lunacy and Big Tallahassee’s wars on Floridians are creating a Florida that’s divided into billionaires versus everyone else. No doubt in many of those billionaires’ minds, they see a Florida divided into masters and servants, with themselves as the masters.
This is not a good outcome. It’s not an American outcome. It’s not a fair outcome.
If elected to the Florida Senate in District 28 I am determined to do everything I possibly can to make Florida affordable again. That includes close scrutiny of the insurance industry and its rates, premiums and payouts. It means facing the reality of climate change and helping Florida families and businesses build in resilience so that insurance rates can come down. It means ending the war on immigrants and labor, so that it costs less to produce Florida’s food, goods and services.
It also means resisting Donald Trump’s crazy and destructive decisions and tendencies rather than sucking up to his hatred, prejudice and rage. We may not be able to stop the war in Iran from the Florida state capital but where we can we must protect Floridians.
This is what I hope to do if elected. If we all work together, I actually believe we may succeed. I hope you’ll agree and join me by donating, volunteering and in November, voting, for David Silverberg for Florida Senate District 28.
I am running for public office, seeking the Florida Senate seat for District 28, covering Collier, Hendry and Lee counties. This encompasses the towns of Naples, Marco Island, Immokalee, Ave Maria, Gateway, LaBelle, and Clewiston—and the Alligator Alcatraz concentration camp.
You should now consider this a partisan website and blog, committed to advocacy rather than non-partisan coverage and analysis.
This is nothing I ever anticipated doing. Indeed, if I were pursuing a political career, I would have started this effort last year.
But, as the Declaration of Independence put it, “when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them”—the American people— “under absolute Despotism,” it is time to take action, even if that action takes one outside a previous sphere of activity.
Donald Trump and, in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis, have invariably been pursuing the object of reducing the American people and the residents of Florida to a state of absolute despotism.
Our political system still affords us the means of resistance. One of those means is the pursuit of elected public office. For the past eight years in The Paradise Progressive blog I have used logic and language to cover and expose their “abuses and usurpations,” particularly relating to the region of Southwest Florida. The moment has come for me to pursue the power of public office to take that resistance to new levels and battlefronts.
These “abuses and usurpations” are reaching a critical point, indeed one where the very existence of the United States and the future of Americans as a free people is at stake.
Nationally, Donald Trump, reigning as though he were a monarch and ignoring the laws, the Constitution and Bill of Rights, has committed the nation to war without any consultation or consent. Every time Americans have to fill their gas tanks they’re being robbed by a war they had no say in starting. When you watch your wallet drain as your tank fills, that’s Trump at the pump.
He has so mismanaged the economy that everyday Americans are being reduced to poverty despite their most strenuous efforts and hard work.
His actions have robbed Americans of their freedom from fear by sending a masked, murderous, motley mob of mercenaries into towns and cities to terrorize and abuse them.
In Florida, Ron DeSantis, reigning in the style of Donald Trump, has waged war on learning and thought, on science and public health, on public education and teachers at all levels. He and his enablers are waging war on the very water, air and soil that makes life in Florida possible for everyone regardless of their political affiliation, beliefs, or national origins. He has attacked institutions and industries that previously welcomed and depended upon visitors from all over the world and disparaged and insulted innocent people of foreign origin.
In a state that is one of the most environmentally vulnerable in the world, he and his extremist legislature have deliberately and purposefully denied and dismissed the clear and present challenges of climate change, to the detriment and danger of all Floridians.
He and his political followers have also sought to eliminate the autonomy and authority of the state’s local governments, especially when it comes to land use and management, in an effort to override responsible planning and governance.
The ultimate end of these actions will be an oppressed nation and a Florida that is poor, paved and polluted.
For all these reasons and many more, I will try to change the current course of events through the system in place.
That’s why I’m running for state senator in District 28. My campaign website is Silverberg4Florida.com. And yes, I’m taking donations (a link is on the site).
My heartfelt thanks to the people who have already made this possible.
In the days ahead I will be elaborating in this space on my reasons for running, the solutions and actions I intend to pursue, and the end state I hope to achieve for Florida and the nation.
This campaign is a race to restore decency, dignity and democracy to Florida and the life we all lead. It’s a race to conserve our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, our freedom from fear, and our pursuit of happiness. It is a campaign to make Florida affordable again. And it is a campaign to end Alligator Alcatraz.
The path to victory is steep. The odds are long. But I believe the journey is worth making.
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) will stepping down next year after eight years in office—and 39 people are running to replace him.
That’s according to the Florida Department of State as of Feb. 18. The cutoff date for candidates to qualify for the ballot is June 12 and there’s no telling how many more people will declare themselves candidates by then.
Of course, of the 12 Republicans, 11 Democrats and 16 candidates from other parties, non-party affiliates and write-ins currently declared, only a very small handful are considered serious, credible contenders for the seat.
Among these is Rep. Byron Donalds (R-19-Fla.). He is certainly the leading contender for the Republican nomination.
For the past four years Donalds has represented the 19th Congressional District of Florida, a coastal area running from Cape Coral at its northern end to Marco Island in the south.
Because this is the home of The Paradise Progressive and Donalds is the highest-ranking federal official in Southwest Florida, he has been the subject of considerable coverage in these pages, and that coverage can now help inform all Florida voters about the person who is seeking to lead them.
This article focuses only on Donalds, what kind of governor he would be and what policies he might pursue, rather than personal issues or scandals.
It is, as anything looking into the future must be, highly speculative; a sort of “thought experiment” as Albert Einstein would have called it.
The Republican race
The Republican assumption in this race is that the primary election, taking place on Tuesday, Aug. 18, will decide the contest.
Because Republicans have over a million-voter advantage in registrations, the candidates are clearly calculating that the primary will be the decisive election, with the general election on Nov. 3 a mere formality.
Accordingly, to date the Republican campaigns are clearly aimed at a narrow base of extreme, committed Make America Great Again (MAGA) party members who are certain to vote and who respond to Donald Trump-like appeals.
As a result, in imitation of Trump, the campaigns have been petty, personal and insulting. Candidates have attacked opponents’ failures, crimes and weaknesses. They are questioning each other’s loyalty to Trump himself, allegiance to his agenda and belief in his infallibility.
What is missing in this approach is virtually any discussion of running Florida, how the state will be managed, what policies will be pursued and how to handle the challenges it will face in the future.
Donalds has massive advantages in this race, chief among them Trump’s urging him to run before he declared in February 2025. Trump’s Feb. 20 X-post at that time was a “complete and total endorsement” after years of snubs, indifference and neglect.
Donald Trump’s endorsement of Rep. Byron Donalds on Feb. 20, 2025.
Trump’s blessing opened the endorsement and money floodgates.
That flood included endorsements from 17 members of the Florida congressional delegation, 27 sheriffs, three quarters of state Republican legislators and numerous donors—perhaps most importantly, Elon Musk.
It also included a cascade of cash. The campaign reported raising over $45 million during 2025.
Clearly, there’s a belief by many in the state that a Donalds victory is all but assured and they want to bask in his favor.
So what would Florida likely be like under Gov. Byron Donalds?
Goodbye Tallahassee, hello Mar-a-Lago
The Tallahassification of Mar-a-Lago. (AI for TPP/ChatGPT)
For all intents and purposes, under a governor Byron Donalds the capital of Florida might as well move from Tallahassee to Mar-a-Lago.
As Donalds puts it in his first priority listed on his campaign website: “Enact the Trump Agenda: Byron is committed to implementing President Trump’s agenda to Make America Great Again.”
Make no mistake: Donald Trump will be governor of Florida in all but name. That’s because Donalds has pledged his fealty to Trump so completely, extravagantly, and excessively that the idea of a shred of independence or autonomy or even a stray individual thought is unimaginable.
That’s not to say that Trump is likely to be deeply involved in the day to day running of the state. He’s got a whole world to run—and he’s still trying to prove that he won the 2020 election. It’s doubtful that he has much interest in insurance rates or water purity beyond the confines of property that he actually owns outright (Mar-a-Lago, Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, and Trump National Doral in Miami, plus adjacent properties and affiliated branded properties).
But it’s also unimaginable that Donalds would make any major move, take any major initiative or even breathe in any way contrary to the desires of Trump. What is more, this is an impression that Donalds himself has nurtured and promoted, especially with a non-stop stream of Trumpist social media posts, particularly on X. He has mounted an indefatigable and unrelenting defense of all of Trump’s most extreme excesses.
For MAGAs this will no doubt be cause for joy. They will be dwelling in the belly of the beast, a Trumptopia that is even more purely ruled by him than the nation he currently dominates. But it also means they will be even closer to the man himself and his rages, unpredictability, and sheer meanness and feel them even more acutely than elsewhere.
For those who oppose his hatred, prejudice and rage—or who are the targets of it—there will be no recourse, salvation or haven in the Sunshine State. A governor Donalds is unlikely to ever make an effort to protect them. The state will no longer effectively be independent—and woe to any state politician who dares to think anything other than Trumpthought or exhale a breath of heresy from Trump doctrine. Certainly no such heresy on any subject is likely to come from the governor himself.
A foreigner-free Florida?
The new welcome to Florida under a governor Byron Donalds? (AI for TPP/ChatGPT)
Given his blindly loyal Trumpism and reflecting his and the Florida Republican Party’s anti-foreigner sentiment, as governor Donalds will likely continue and intensify the state’s efforts against all foreigners of all origins and legal statuses on all fronts.
From the time he rode down the elevator in Trump Tower in 2015 Trump has been anti-foreigner. His first and most infamous declaration was that Mexicans were “rapists” and “criminals” and he has not deviated from those perceptions during his entire time in public life.
Trump considers immigration (other than by white, eastern European women he marries) as an invasion that has to be stopped and reversed. Accordingly, upon taking office his second time he began a nationwide purge, not only of undocumented migrants, but of immigrants of all kinds from virtually all other countries (especially, as he once put it, “shit hole” countries).
He is certainly seconded in this by his Deputy Chief of Staff, Stephen Miller, of whom Trump once reportedly said “If it was up to Stephen, there would only be 100 million people in this country — and all of them would look like him.”
Certainly, both the legislative and executive branches of Florida’s government have enthusiastically joined this effort to date. Indeed, where there has been disagreement between the governor and the legislature it has been in differences over the severity of their anti-migrant, anti-foreigner measures. Florida has also been the most enthusiastic state in the union in forging bonds between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities, with all of its 67 counties and its cities signing 287(g) agreements, sometimes under duress from the state’s governor and attorney general.
Ironically, this comes in a state that before Trump was one of the most diverse in the nation and benefited from foreign contributions and investment. In Florida, especially Miami, immigrants and refugees from around the world flocked to find refuge and built businesses and communities that reflected their origins and enriched the state. In the state’s groves and fields migrants—many undocumented and minimally paid—picked its fruits and vegetables. They also built its buildings, staffed its hotels and resorts and were the sinews of a robust economy.
Beyond businesses and labor, foreign tourists and visitors were a key element in the state’s tourism industry, filling hotels, buying tickets and flocking to Disney World and Universal Studio in Orlando. Even here DeSantis pursued an anti-woke cultural crusade that succeeded in attacking the Disney corporation to the point where the company chose not to make a billion dollar investment in new facilities.
Donalds has proven himself a willing standard-bearer in Florida’s fight against foreigners of all sorts.
When the city council of Fort Myers in his district hesitated to sign on to the 287g program, Donalds was quick to condemn them.
“These officials that don’t understand their role, which is to implement a federal and state law, not circumvent and create sanctuary cities,” he said in an interview on the conservative NewsMax channel. “They simply need to be removed from office. They’re not going to follow the law. It’s that simple.”
He also ostentatiously defended the actions of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) directorate of the Department of Homeland Security.
On Jan. 21, after American citizen Renee Good was killed by ICE agents in Minneapolis, Donalds posted on X: “What Democrats are doing to obstruct, impede, and sabotage ICE is treasonous. The American people granted President Trump a mandate to deport illegal aliens and Make America Safe Again. As Governor, any Florida official who blocks these lawful actions will be removed from office.”
After Alex Pretti was killed by ICE agents on Jan. 24, Donalds told NewsNation: “Nobody wants to see any American lose their life like this…But we also have to be honest about what’s happening in Minneapolis. You have paid agitators. You have a coordinated operation going on in Minneapolis for the sole purpose of doxing ICE officers, impeding ICE officers, stopping them from following and executing federal law.”
While he denied saying that Pretti was a paid agitator he said, “I’m not saying that. I’m saying that what people are seeing on their phones and on news networks around the country is the result of paid protests and paid agitators.”
Ironically, for all its Trumpist loyalty, the state that created the Alligator Alcatraz concentration and detention camp to facilitate Trump’s anti-foreigner effort is also being shortchanged by that president. Despite spending $600 million to build camps and round up, detain and deport migrants, when it came to promised federal reimbursement, Florida’s state government is belatedly discovering another aspect of Trump management—his infamous welching on promises and commitments.
As governor Donalds will no doubt spend whatever he thinks—or is told—it takes for the state to curry Trump’s favor and carry out his wishes, no matter how extreme, harsh or unconstitutional. However, like so many others he will likely discover for himself that a Trump promise isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. Still, Florida taxpayers are unlikely to ever hear him complain or make an effort on behalf of the hard-earned dollars they pour into state coffers.
Public de-education
The future of Florida’s public schools and universities? (AI for TPP/ChatGPT)
Florida public education is unlikely to find a friend in a governor Byron Donalds. Indeed, it looks like it will be facing an enemy.
Public education is not something that is top of mind in the current gubernatorial race. Only Republican candidate James Fishback has mentioned it and that only to pledge that he would mandate student uniforms and local businesses should provide student meals.
Public education is being squeezed from all sides in Florida. The current governor attacked it as part of his anti-“woke” crusade and reached down to remove, replace or endorse opponents of local school board members he didn’t like. Republican politicians inveigh against it. At every legislative session measures are introduced to restrict or regulate it, whether that applies to classroom content, teacher conduct or state funding. A private voucher program for parents to send children to non-public or parochial schools that came at the expense of public education was voted into being by the legislature and left Florida with $400 million in unused vouchers. Teachers are viewed with suspicion by vocal MAGA parents and even the teachers’ expressions of personal opinion—like heretical statements criticizing the late Charlie Kirk—have been cause for investigation and suspension.
A governor Donalds coming into this mix would likely add a massively anti-public education force. Donalds can be expected to always side with private, anti-public education activists, favor private, for-profit schools and shortchange funding for public education at every opportunity—and this would come on top of the end of federal standards and funding given the dissolution of the Department of Education.
Teachers’ unions can expect no favor, no support and no mercy from a governor Donalds’ office.
As Erika Donalds put it in a 2022 Fox Business interview: “Teachers unions are the enemy of our children when it comes to their education in America.” There’s no reason to believe that her husband holds any different opinion.
Nor would higher education likely be spared. Accreditation, tenure and board membership of Florida universities were all attacked under DeSantis for a variety of perceived sins, particularly for practicing diversity, equity and inclusion. He put very expensive cronies in charge of colleges, who in turn enriched their friends.
There is nothing to indicate that this would be any different under Donalds and in fact it would likely get worse.
Public un-health?
A child with measles is examined by a doctor. (Photo: World Health Organization/Danil Usmanov)
Florida is arguably the most regressive state in the nation when it comes to public health. Under a governor Byron Donalds it would likely regress to the Middle Ages.
As in the rest of the world, the COVID pandemic of 2020 to 2022 marks a break point in Florida’s history of public health provision. It was a time when a small but extremely vocal minority of people, encouraged by a dismissive President and a complicit governor, turned against science and the whole edifice of modern health protections, favoring instead unproven potions, quack prescriptions and conspiracy theories.
As a congressional candidate and then as a congressman, Donalds inserted himself into local debates over mask mandates (he was against them), vaccination mandates (also opposed), and consistently opposed federal efforts to protect the population at large from the ravages of COVID.
“Biden and the radical Left are coming for your freedom,” he wrote in a fundraising e-mail on Aug. 12, 2021, which warned that President Joe Biden might intervene against a mask mandate ban put in place by Gov. Ron DeSantis in Florida. “They’re trying to use the federal government to FORCE Anthony Fauci’s anti-scientific mandates and lockdowns on Florida and take away our ability to make our own decisions.”
While never denouncing vaccines per se, Donalds did what he could to feed vaccine skepticism and fight all recommendations to protect the public from COVID and its variants. (For a full discussion of this, see “The Donalds Dossier: Anti-vaxxer or not?”)
Ironically enough, Donalds himself tested positive for COVID on Oct. 16, 2021, causing Trump to shun him and not even mention him in remarks when he came to Fort Myers that day. (Donalds recovered after a two-week quarantine.)
Nor has Donalds been any kinder to health care insurance and coverage for Floridians, whom he believes don’t need “full-blown, gold-plated” health insurance coverage.
“The biggest thing we need is we need a system where there are catastrophic health care plans … You can have a health care policy around catastrophic care, but that doesn’t really mean you need a full-blown gold-plated health care policy,” he said in a radio interview in October 2025.
He also said at the time that he wanted to get rid of the Affordable Care Act (better known as “Obamacare”)—this in a state that, with 4.4 million enrollees, has the highest number of enrollees in the country.
A big question is whether if elected governor Donalds would keep on the state’s current Surgeon General, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, who has been DeSantis’ anti-vaxx, anti-mandate, anti-public health right hand man. Ladapo announced in September 2025 that the state would be abolishing all vaccine mandates for schoolchildren—“Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and, and, slavery, okay?” he said of mandates, emphasizing all “are going to be gone for sure.”
It didn’t take long for measles, a previously suppressed disease, to break out in Florida, with one center being Ave Maria University in Collier County. That outbreak is still ongoing and appears to be increasing as of this writing.
So the record indicates that a Byron Donalds governorship would be devastating for Floridians’ health and healthcare—this at a time when previously suppressed or eradicated diseases are making a comeback, widespread vaccination is under attack and public health agencies are being dismantled at the federal and state levels.
In November 2025 Trump reversed a 10-year moratorium he had previously imposed on allowing oil exploration and exploitation in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, along with other sensitive locations. The moratorium was imposed in the runup to the 2020 election to gain the favor of Florida voters.
All of these are assaults on the natural environment and all will acutely affect the state of Florida—and they come on top of challenges to the environmentally sensitive state like climatic warming, intensifying storms and sea level rise.
Donalds is a member in good standing of the climate change-denying contingent in Florida, which includes the past and current governors and the Republican majority of the state legislature, which has gone so far as to outlaw the term “climate change” from state documents.
When asked in 2023 if he thought there was a correlation between heat waves and climate change Donalds simply replied “No, I don’t.” He has opposed what he called “weaponization” of Section 401 and fought efforts by President Joe Biden to stop water pollution.
In the case of oil drilling, Donalds did sign on to a letter along with seven other Florida representatives disapproving of Trump’s action, saying that drilling would interfere with operations at Eglin Air Force Base in the Panhandle. It was his only action to protect the Florida environment from Trump’s drive to encourage pollution, despoliation and exploitation in the service of the fossil fuel industry.
As governor—and as a submissively Trumpist governor at that—Donalds cannot be expected to defend Florida’s natural environment, protect its waters or safeguard its Gulf shores from oil pollution and defilement. He will most likely go along with Trump’s insistence that climate change is a “hoax” and do everything he can to eliminate measures to contain, restrain or prepare for it.
This comes on top of a strong movement in the Florida state government to “pre-empt” local governments’ efforts to take immediate steps to prepare or counteract the undeniable effects of climate change in their immediate areas.
Indeed, the pre-emption movement affects a broader swath of life in Florida. Driven by developers, many of whom are also state legislators, it is designed to eliminate all local barriers to development and exploitation.
Adding to this is an assault on the funding sources of local government by the governor and his allies to end property taxes. Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia is seeking the power to overhaul local budgets and remove officials in the name of his Florida Agency for Fiscal Oversight (FAFO, a deliberate play on a profane definition). Ostensibly intended to root out fraud, waste and abuse in local government financial matters, in fact it appears to be an attempt to end all local autonomy.
The logical end result of these efforts and the state over which a governor Byron Donalds would preside, would be a fully paved over Florida, run entirely from the governor’s office at Trump’s direction, with no local autonomy of any kind. There would be no conservation of the natural environment and the air, land and sea would be completely polluted. Natural barriers or wetlands would likely be paved over and no longer protect the population, which would be utterly at the mercy of intensifying hurricanes and rising waters.
Further, Florida would likely cease to be a major citrus-producing state, its trees ravaged by citrus greening, its reliance on citrus imports destroyed by Trump’s tariffs and its groves sold to developers for housing developments.
Ironically enough, Florida’s great natural renewable energy resources, its sun and wind, which might at least mitigate climate change would not only be neglected but would likely be actively opposed by both Donalds and Trump.
Trump is known for his pathological fear and hatred of wind turbines for generating energy. There are currently no wind farms in Florida or offshore, so this is a phantom menace and there certainly wouldn’t be any built under a governor Donalds.
But Florida was making efforts to develop its solar generation capabilities and this too Donalds has opposed.
There can be no clearer statement of his attitudes on this subject than the headline on a 2023 op-ed under his byline for the Fort Myers News-Press: “The Dishonest Fantasy of Wind and Solar.”
“In sum, I’m not opposed to wind turbines and solar panels, but if we seriously want an affordable, reliable, secure ‘green energy’ grid, we cannot rely on the dishonest fantasy of utilizing spiky intermittent energy sources like wind and solar,” he argued. “Instead, we must embrace nuclear power and include nuclear in future green alternative energy discussions. Ultimately, we must base our future energy-related decisions on logic and objective facts—not politics.”
The high likelihood is that this op-ed wasn’t really written by Donalds but by a nuclear energy lobbyist—because in his second term, Donalds signed on as a shill for the nuclear power industry.
In the 2023 Congress Donalds sponsored 14 bills related to the nuclear power industry, mostly deregulating it or in some way favoring it, often in a highly technical manner. None had anything to do with his district, the concerns of its residents, or fell within his usual areas of expertise. (The nuclear industry also didn’t get much for its investment since none of his bills went anywhere.)
Donalds benefited greatly from fossil energy industry political action committees (PACs) and seven of them contributed a total of $25,500 to his campaign in the 2024 cycle. Fossil fuel PACs included those from the companies Sinclair, Valero, Marathon and Exxon Mobile as well as NextEra Energy, a utility infrastructure company, and Duke Energy, an energy holding company. Also contributing was the overall trade group for fossil fuels, the American Fuels and Petrochemical Manufacturers Association PAC.
The race card
Michelle and Barack Obama depicted as apes in a Xerias_X video reposted by President Donald Trump on Feb. 6. (Image: Truth Social via Laura Loomer on X)
If elected, Byron Donalds would be Florida’s first black governor.
It’s not a precedent or breakthrough that he’s playing up. On the contrary, he’s doing all he can to get Floridians to overlook his race.
In an atmosphere where racism is condemned and merit emphasized, this would be unremarkable. However, that’s not the current atmosphere.
On Feb. 6, Trump re-posted a 55-second artificial intelligence-generated video by the extreme X-site Xerias_X depicting former President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle as apes. The video didn’t end there: it depicted a variety of other Democratic figures as African animals, including US House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-8-NY) as a meerkat or lemur, former President Joe Biden as a baboon and former Vice President Kamala Harris as a tortoise. At the end of the video, all the animals bow before Trump as a lion king.
The animal-politicians bow before Lion King Trump in the Xerias video reposted by the White House. (Image: Truth Social via Laura Loomer on X).
The video was a clear display of Trump’s utter contempt for other politicians, the public, and his blatant, undisguised racism—with the exception of the unfailingly devoted and politically useful cover of Byron Donalds.
But of all the Republicans, the one black candidate, the person who stood most to be offended, whose outrage was most to be expected, was silent. His office released a statement to the Tampa Bay Times that “Team Byron Donalds has called the White House and learned that a staffer had let POTUS down”—accepting uncritically the White House explanation that the posting was the work of a staffer, who remains unnamed to this day.
And that was all there was.
Donalds’ reaction—or non-reaction—is instructive of his likely actions and attitudes if elected governor. Florida’s minorities, of all kinds, will find no aid, assistance or support from this governor if they face challenges or prejudice. Racism will go unanswered. And any Trump excess or outrage will not only be uncritically accepted, it will likely be defended, rationalized and when directed, implemented by this governor.
Indeed, Donalds’ whole political career is built on a gargantuan contradiction that will be unavoidable if he accedes to the highest office in the state.
“I am everything the fake news media tells you doesn’t exist,” Donalds stated in his opening campaign video when he first ran for Congress in 2020. “A strong, Trump-supporting, gun-owning, liberty-loving, pro-life, politically incorrect black man.”
He hasn’t changed positions since making that statement. But increasingly, holding to that Trumpist faith means accepting authoritarian coups, mob and state-sanctioned violence, concentration camps, constitutional violations, mind-boggling corruption, election rigging, dictatorial dominance and increasingly overt and extreme racial prejudice.
Byron Donalds would not be in a position to seek the governorship of a state that was once slave-holding and secessionist, segregationist and lynching-prone if not for the giant steps away from that barbarity over the last 160 years. If not for Emancipation, he would be a slave. If not for Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement, he would not be able to vote. If not for the Civil Rights Act, his children would be consigned to second-class schools and separate water fountains. If not for repeal of Florida’s miscegenation law in 1969, he would not have been able to date—much less, marry—his current spouse. If not for the election of Barack Obama, who showed that Americans could accept a capable black man and elect him president, he could not aspire to the state’s highest political office or even the highest office in the land.
Instead, he has embraced a movement and man who wants to go in exactly the opposite direction, to return to a time when in his view America was “great.” But when was that time? Was it before the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision of 1857, which ruled that a black man could never be an American citizen? What is more, this is a president who is ferociously and aggressively turning back the clock and trying to bend the arc of history to an imagined time when prejudice reigned, racial violence was common, and intolerance ruled—and there was no place in that world for an ambitious black man like Byron Donalds.
As a loyal, submissive, Trumpist governor, this is what Byron Donald can be expected to bring to Florida.
Donalds may well win the Republican nomination on Aug. 18. But when Florida voters go to the polls in the general election on Nov. 3, they will have a choice. Assuming the election is held as scheduled, assuming every legitimate voter is allowed to cast a ballot, and assuming that the votes are counted fairly, accurately and reported truthfully, the people of Florida can chart a very different destiny for their Sunshine State—if they dare.
Floridians face a fork in the road in the year ahead in this artificial intelligence-generated illustration. (Art: AI for TPP/ChatGPT)
Jan. 5, 2026 by David Silverberg
This year Florida voters will face choices that will determine how they live their lives as well as the direction and destiny of their state—even more so than in “normal” election years.
At the top of the list will be the race for governor.
Then there is election of a senator. The current senator, Sen. Ashley Moody (R-Fla.), is running in her own right after being appointed in January by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) to fill in the unexpired term of Marco Rubio, who was appointed Secretary of State.
The race for Chief Financial Officer will be unusually important and competitive this year as well and the race for Attorney General will see the incumbent, James Uthmeier, creator of the Alligator Alcatraz concentration camp, defending his seat.
On the same ballot will be elections for offices at all levels including members of the House of Representatives but also state, county and municipal offices. Because President Donald Trump will be on the road stumping for his candidates, Floridians should expect some Trump rallies to boost their chances.
In the legislature two major issues will dominate the session that begins Jan. 13, or possibly a special session: whether to redistrict Florida in mid-decade and whether to abolish property taxes.
Beyond these political occurrences, Florida is scheduled to host two major scheduled events this year: Miami will be one of 11 American cities hosting Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup games.
In December, Miami will again be the host city for the G20 summit of the world’s leading economic powers at the Trump National Doral Miami resort and spa.
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is term-limited and so his seat is up for grabs.
Media coverage of the race conveys the impression that only three Republicans and two Democrats are seeking their parties’ nomination.
In fact, as of Jan. 3 there were 11 Republicans, 9 Democrats and 14 non-party, independent, other party and write-in candidates running for Governor, according to the Florida Department of State.
Declared candidates for governor, as of Jan. 3, 2026. (Chart: TPP from FDoS)
The ultimate filing deadline is noon, June 12, 2026, so this list can be expected to get perhaps a bit shorter as candidates drop out—but more likely a lot longer.
It’s in this kind of situation that a free and independent media should play its democratic role in winnowing the field to what are generally considered the “serious” candidates.
On the Republican side, the leading candidate is Rep. Byron Donalds (R-19-Fla.), who was endorsed by President Donald Trump even before he declared his candidacy in February. Donalds has also been endorsed by businessman Elon Musk, other large donors and a slew of Republican officeholders in the state and has a reported war chest of $40 million. However, this includes contributions to his congressional campaign, which the Federal Election Commission ruled must be refunded to donors, a dispute that was unresolved as of this writing.
Two other credible Republican candidates are former Florida House Speaker Paul Renner, and businessman James Fishback.
Hovering in the wings are Lt. Gov. Jay Collins (R) and Florida First Lady Casey DeSantis, who was long considered a possible contender. By the end of the past year she had not definitively stated her status one way or another, although a run seemed doubtful, and Collins had not declared his candidacy, despite much media speculation.
On the Democratic side the leading contender is David Jolly, a former congressman and converted Republican who has been actively campaigning throughout the state. To the degree that he has any serious challenger within the Party, it comes from Jerry Demings, the Orange County mayor and former sheriff.
(Editor’s note: The most notable candidate in the running, based entirely on name alone, is Republican Shea Cruel. A Cruel versus Jolly race would generate headlines for the ages.)
Two big issues hovering over the gubernatorial race are the degree to which the new governor will continue DeSantis’ culture war against “woke” and policies—particularly against immigration and migrants—and the new governor’s relations with Trump if Trump is in office during the governor’s full tenure.
Despite the seriousness of these issues, the contest on the Republican side has already turned nasty and personal and can expected to become more so as Primary Election Day, Aug. 18, approaches. Candidates clearly see the race turning on personal factors and there is no indication this will change as the year progresses.
(The Paradise Progressive will be covering the gubernatorial race and candidates in much more detail in days to come.)
The Senate race
Sen. Ashley Moody (R-Fla.) will be defending her seat this year. Serving as the state attorney general, she was appointed senator by DeSantis in January when sitting senator Marco Rubio was named Secretary of State. In this election Moody will be seeking the office in her own right.
There are already a slew of candidates both on the Republican primary side and among Democrats and independents.
An early Democratic opponent, Joshua Weil, who made a name for himself as a very effective fundraiser in a special congressional election, dropped out of the race in July due to medical conditions. Alexander Vindman, a resident of Broward County and retired US Army colonel whose whistleblowing on Trump’s phone call leading to his first impeachment, has also fueled speculation about a Democratic run for the seat.
However, Moody as the incumbent has the clear advantage in name recognition, funding and endorsements. She won attorney general seats twice in statewide races in 2018 and 2022, although without serious opposition.
However, the unexpected always lurks around the corner.
Candidates for Florida’s Senate seat as of Jan. 3. (Chart: TPP from FDoS)
The Chief Financial Officer race
The state of Florida created the office of Chief Financial Officer (CFO) in 2002, consolidating several finance-related positions into a single Office of Financial Regulation.
This is an elected, Cabinet-level position that is third in line to succeed the governor after the lieutenant governor. There have been four CFOs since its creation, three Republicans, one Democrat as well as a brief acting CFO.
Blaise Ingoglia (R) is the fifth CFO, appointed in July 2025 when the previous one, James “Jimmy” Patronis, stepped down to run for a congressional seat in a special election in the 1st Congressional District to replace the resigning Matt Gaetz.
This year Ingoglia is running to fill a full, four-year term in his own right.
Ingoglia served as a state senator from the 11th District, which covered the largely rural Citrus, Hernando, and Sumter counties and part of Pasco County. Before that he served as a member of the state House of Representatives.
Ingoglia, originally from Queens, NY, moved to Spring Hill, Fla., in 1996 where he worked in real estate and then entered politics in 2008.
Ingoglia has been a consistently extremely conservative politician, often pushing the most radical ideas on issues like immigration enforcement, voting accessibility and taxation.
While there are 6 candidates running for the office, the most credible other candidate is state Sen. Joe Gruters (R-22-Sarasota) who is currently also serving as chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC). He was also former treasurer of the RNC and served as chair of the Florida Republican Party from 2019 to 2023.
Gruters received Trump’s “complete and total” endorsement for CFO in 2024 and is promoting himself as the true America First, Make America Great Again (MAGA) believer, in contrast, he says, to Ingoglia. At the same time DeSantis attacked Gruters as insufficiently conservative.
There is only one non-Republican candidate for the office, John Smith, an Orlando businessman with a hurricane storm shutter business, who is running as non-party affiliated. As of Jan. 3 there were no Democratic Party candidates.
Smith’s candidacy closes the Republican primary to non-Republicans, effectively disenfranchising Democratic voters unless a Democratic candidate appears before the deadline. In this he is effectively functioning as what is known as a “ghost” candidate.
Unless the field changes, this will be a cramped, internecine Republican Party battle based on the fervor of the various candidates’ belief, the purity of their extremism and the ability to appeal to a hardcore MAGA base. It will likely be decided in the August 18 primary.
Candidates for the position of Florida CFO as of Jan. 3.(Chart: TPP from FDoS)
Attorney General
This year James Uthmeier (R) will be defending his seat as Florida Attorney General against a Republican challenger and two Democratic Party candidates.
Uthmeier, 38, was appointed in February 2025 to take the place of Ashley Moody when she was made senator by DeSantis. Prior to that he served as the governor’s chief of staff.
In his short time as Attorney General, Uthmeier has proven an aggressive, heavily ideological and outspoken partisan.
Uthmeier’s Republican opponent is Steven Leskovich, a trial attorney who has lived in Florida for 30 years and states that he’s running to defend the Constitution, eliminate corruption, fight crime, “and political weaponization in the justice system.”
There are two Democratic candidates.
Jim Lewis is a political aspirant who previously ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic attorney general nomination in 2022 and mayor of Fort Lauderdale in 2023 as well as a variety of other state and county offices.
Jose Javier Rodriguez served in the Florida House and Senate and was Assistant Secretary of Labor for Employment and Training from April 2024 to the end of President Joe Biden’s term in office.
Candidates for the position of Florida Attorney General as of Jan. 3. (Chart: TPP from FDoS)
Commissioner of Agriculture
While the Florida Commissioner of Agriculture has broad responsibilities and authorities to support and regulate the state’s agriculture, consumer protection and environment, the office is usually a non-controversial one. However, as a Cabinet position it has also proved a platform for aspiring statewide candidates.
In 2018 Nicole “Nikki” Fried won the seat, the only Democratic Party candidate to attain statewide office that year. After leaving office in 2023 she became chair of the Florida Democratic Party. In 2018 Adam Putnam was the leading contender for the Republican gubernatorial nomination until Trump endorsed DeSantis.
This year, as of Jan. 3 there were three candidates for Agriculture Commissioner: Republican Matthew Taylor, Democrat Chase “Andy” Romagno and non-party affiliated Kyle Gibson, who is currently seeking petition signatures to run for governor, rather than commissioner.
Candidates for the position of Florida Agriculture Commissioner as of Jan. 3. (Chart: TPP from FDoS)
Midterms and The Big Rig
Florida appears on the brink of joining Trump’s effort to gerrymander congressional districts nationwide in order to determine the election’s outcome in his favor. Given his use of the word “rig,” “rigged” and “rigging” to denote manipulation of a process, it seems only appropriate to dub his gerrymandering project “The Big Rig.”
It is very difficult to say how the rigging process will play out in Florida. At the end of the year, as the legislature began its early committee hearings, DeSantis and House Speaker Rep. Daniel Perez (R-116-Miami) were both pushing for it. However, DeSantis was floating the idea of a special session while Perez wanted to get it done by the end of the regular session on March 13. By contrast, Senate President Sen. Ben Albritton (R-27-Bartow) was more cautious and in agreement with DeSantis.
Regardless of the timing, there seems agreement to rig Florida’s districts among the legislature’s Republican supermajority. Democrats, as to be expected, are opposed and are backed by grassroots opponents. However, when the House held its first procedural committee hearing on redistricting, the public was shut out and no comments from the floor were allowed—no doubt a preview of what is likely to be a forced, arbitrary and undemocratic effort by lawmakers.
If Florida does rig its congressional map, every federal representative and challenger will be affected. Even if Republicans pick up some additional ostensibly Republican districts, that may not matter as much as it would in previously “normal” elections. There is also virtually no doubt that any new map will be challenged in court.
However it ultimately turns out, the battle is already introducing a new level of tumult and turmoil in this year’s already roiled Florida political scene.
Affordability and the property tax debate
Life for everyday Americans is getting more expensive and difficult. The only person who seems to disagree with this assessment is President Donald Trump, who has dismissed discussion of affordability as “a Democratic hoax.”
Florida Democrats, like their counterparts across the country, recognize voters’ stress and are making affordability key plank in their 2026 platform.
“Prices are rising, period. And we are seeing Republican politicians pander to DC and squabble amongst themselves instead of fixing the problem, so Democrats are offering ideas,” Florida House Democratic Leader Rep. Fentrice Driskell (D-67-Temple Terrace) told a press conference on Dec. 8.
The Democrats are already offering legislation to make inroads on high costs but as a minority in a supermajority Republican legislature, the road to passage is steep and the odds are long.
In Florida the affordability crisis is especially acute and the result of a variety of factors like the high proportion of seniors on fixed incomes.
But playing a major role are natural factors like prevalent and frequent disasters like hurricanes, which drive up insurance costs while at the same time making insurers flee the state. Furthermore, climate change is driving up the risks to the state’s residents while the Republican-dominated state government determinedly denies its existence. That in turn dampens efforts to build climatic resilience, increasing the state’s vulnerability to disasters, which in turn drives up costs and insurance rates, in a vicious cycle.
This has had the practical effect of devastating Florida’s low-cost labor pool, which previously provided migrant and immigrant labor, particularly in the construction, hospitality, tourism and agricultural sectors. That in turn has driven up the costs of goods and services as labor becomes scarcer and more expensive, the cost of which is passed on to consumers.
(Additionally, Trump’s threats to Canada and his enmity to visiting foreigners has dampened a once-robust tourism industry important to Florida’s economy.)
That their own policies might be exacerbating the affordability crisis for Floridians is not an admissible notion for the Florida Republicans in power, so they must seek some relief in a different remedy.
Taxation has never been popular in Florida and now DeSantis wants to take anti-taxation to a new level and abolish property taxes altogether.
Florida is already a low-tax state. It has no income tax, estate or inheritance taxes. Its tax collection is very low per capita. Most importantly, it features a homestead exemption that reduces the assessed, taxable value of a lived-in home and limits annual property tax increases.
DeSantis floated the idea of ending property taxes in his annual State of the State address on March 4, 2025.
“While Florida property values have surged in recent years, this has come at a cost to taxpayers squeezed by increasing local government property taxes,” he said. “Escalating assessments have created a gusher of revenue for local governments—and many in Florida have seen their budgets increase far beyond the growth in population. Taxpayers need relief. You buy a home, pay off a mortgage—and yet you still have to write a check to the government every year just to live on your own property? Is the property yours or are you just renting from the government?”
Since then the debate over the future of property taxes in Florida has been percolating at a relatively low level but this year when the legislature convenes on Jan. 13 it will be coming to a full boil.
Local governments depend on property taxes to provide basic services, income for schools and infrastructure maintenance and improvement—and the revenue has hardly been a “gusher.” Experts and local officials have been making the case that an end of property taxes would cripple their operations.
“Local governments would lose fiscal autonomy as they would no longer collect property taxes, and they would become dependent on the state for funding (whether it is for schools or other public services like police and fire services),” warned the Florida Policy Institute in an in-depth paper, “A Risky Proposition: Weakening Local Governments by Eliminating Property Tax Revenue,” issued in February.
At the same time CFO Ingoglia has been prowling the state in imitation of Elon Musk and the now-abolished Department of Government Efficiency (locally renamed FAFO, which has a profane generic meaning but in this case stands for the Florida Agency for Fiscal Oversight).
Ingoglia was trying to highlight what he said was wasteful spending by local governments but they pushed back.
“This whole thing is a made-for-television event, and it’s specifically made for television for the CFO’s re-election,” said Seminole County Commissioner Lee Constantine (R-District 3) at a forum in November. At the same event Broward County Democratic Commissioner Steven Geller (D-District 5) was similarly scornful. “Check the numbers,” he said of Ingoglia’s audit of his county. “Because they are fictitious. Made-up. Phony. False.”
In addition to its impact on local governments, experts are warning that abolishing property taxes would have to be made up with sales taxes that fall most heavily on the least wealthy Floridians, the working and middle classes, while benefiting the rich. Florida is already the most “regressive” tax state in the nation and ending property taxes would make the burden even more extreme.
Realtors have also warned that ending property taxes would drive up home prices by 9 percent, repelling new home buyers and renters from the market.
These are thorny, difficult and ultimately increasingly emotional issues that will likely dominate the legislative session and all of 2026.
Two paths diverged
The year’s elections will take place amidst an increasingly fragmented Republican legislative majority.
The days of automatic obedience to DeSantis when he was running for president are over. State Republicans, especially House Speaker Perez, are proving contrarian and intractable—or skeptical and independent, depending on one’s point of view.
This is in no way implies a repudiation of Trumpism. In fact, during the 2025 session the battle between DeSantis and Perez was over who was more passionate and committed in the service of Trump’s hatred of migrants and immigrants. DeSantis viewed the proposals by Perez and the legislature as too weak and when the legislature passed its own TRUMP (Tackling and Reforming Unlawful Migration Policy) Act, (CS/SB 2B), DeSantis vetoed it.
While the rest of the country may be revolting against Trump’s threats and bullying, in Florida legislative pushback against an equally bullying and autocratic state government remains relatively tepid and weak.
Ultimately, the fissures and faults in Florida’s governance will have to be resolved by the primary and general elections this year.
It’s as though Floridians stand at a crossroads: one path leads into sunshine and a brighter future, the other into a dark, watery swamp—and as every Floridian knows, where there’s water, there may be alligators.
When you live in Florida, you have to pick your steps with care, whether in the streets, by the streams—or in the voting booth.
Gazing into a crystal ball, not to look to the future but to understand the past. (Art: AI for TPP/ChatGPT)
Nov. 17, 2025 by David Silverberg
Sometimes clearly seeing the future brings no joy. There is such a thing as being too prophetic.
Since 2022, as each year has dawned, The Paradise Progressive has tried to look ahead at domestic political trends and likelihoods in the year to come, trying to objectively think through the direction events were taking. What would be the big stories that would bear watching in the coming days?
But it’s not enough to just make predictions; when the year ends, anyone peering ahead has an obligation to evaluate his or her accuracy and ability as a seer.
Accordingly, in 2023 The Paradise Progressive began grading its own predictions when the year ended, first on an A to F scale and then, last year, as simply “prophetic” or “pathetic.”
It is doing this again this year, if a bit early. There’s still a month and a half to go in 2025 and given this president and regime virtually anything may happen in the next 44 days.
But in a year of momentous events it makes sense to take a pause on the eve of Thanksgiving. People who are able to afford to sit down to a full table, free from fear of sudden seizure or detention, should truly give thanks for the abundance of their blessings.
It is sad and startling to report that the predictions made by The Paradise Progressive at the beginning of 2025, just before Donald Trump was inaugurated for the second time, were horrifyingly accurate and the darkest prospects and most extreme dangers came to pass.
This analysis only includes those firm predictions that can be judged in light of later events, not the many questions and uncertainties that were raised by Trump’s election and inauguration.
Together, these predictions provide a view of what historians will surely record as one of the most—if not the most—grievous years in American history.
What were they? Let us review them together, first the predictions in italics, then the results.
“Trump and his legions can be expected to hit hard and move fast. There will be sweeping disruptions, especially in the first 100 days of the regime, indeed probably even announced in the inaugural address on Jan. 20. Even on his first day, Trump has said he will be a dictator and issue an avalanche of executive orders to—at the very least—encourage fossil fuel exploration and usage, round up migrants and pardon January 6th insurrectionists. But numerous other orders are likely to go much further.”
Trump and his regime knew they needed to act before opposition could coalesce and their measures could be challenged through litigation or legislation. So, as predicted, they hit hard and moved fast.
Indeed, on his first day in office, Trump issued 26 executive orders, covering everything from establishing the Department of Government Efficiency to withdrawing the United States from the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Accord. As of this writing, he has issued a total of 212 executive orders. Some have been challenged in court and remain unresolved. But they nonetheless upended the United States government and the lives of all Americans.
Of the three matters explicitly named, when it came to fossil fuel exploitation, Trump declared a national energy emergency and prioritized oil exploration on federal lands—including in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. When it came to rounding up migrants, the Trump regime initiated what has amounted to an ethnic and racial war against Hispanics and all immigrants, sweeping up US citizens of long duration in its dragnet. When it came to the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021, on his first day in office Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of the insurrectionists—and he has issued over 1,600 pardons for all kinds of federal criminals and miscreants since.
“It will be a year when Donald Trump attempts to dominate all thought, action, law, media, policy, and government and where he fails to do this personally, his cultists, followers and enablers will work on his behalf and toward his ends.”
That certainly proved prophetic. The second Trump administration not only pursued total dominance in all areas of government, it initiated a cultural revolution that attempted—and continues to attempt—a brutish cultural assault, from bullying and extorting institutions of higher learning to stop free inquiry, to suppressing critical media through threats and litigation, to disparaging and canceling individual artists and performers.
If any one act expressed this cultural revolution more than any other, it was Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, having himself named chairman of its board and even floating the idea of re-naming it for himself or his wife, neither of whom had any connection to it, its culture or its mission.
“This regime will be characterized by pettiness, cruelty, hatred, prejudice, rage, disparagement, racism, misogyny, and criminality. It will rule through threats, intimidation and defamation. It will be corrupt to its very marrow.”
This prophecy was fulfilled in so many ways that listing them would be exhausting—and redundant. Any American can recite a litany of Trump regime outrages, offenses and crimes. All one has to do is look at Trump’s Truth Social postings to document this prediction. What is more, every day brings new and often bizarre examples.
Fear has now been institutionalized as a governing principle and the regime is at war with the people whom previous presidents once served.
“For everyday consumers, anti-immigration measures will mean higher prices and harsher inflation and with national anti-immigrant measures coming on top of the ones that Florida has already enacted, the price at checkout is likely to be steep—to say nothing of the human suffering that will underly it.”
Prices are rising steeply, as anyone can see from their grocery bills (the price of coffee was up 18.9 percent in September). But it’s not just anti-immigration measures that are causing this; a major driver is Trump’s tariffs (more about them below).
Government-issued statistics on matters like inflation can no longer be automatically considered reliable. In August, Trump fired Erika McEntarfer, head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics when he disliked a revised report on the unemployment rate. The prolonged government shutdown and purges of vital government officials severely weakened the federal government data-gathering abilities.
This affected even vital functions like setting the Federal Reserve’s prime interest rate. When Chairman Jerome Powell held a press conference on Oct. 29, he acknowledged the lack of reliable data for Federal Reserve decisionmaking and likened it to driving in fog.
“What do you do if you’re driving in the fog?” he asked. “You slow down.” In this context he meant the Federal Reserve might not change interest rates at its next meeting.
However, a variety of sources, both government and non-government put the real current inflation rate at 3 percent.
When it came to immigration, The Paradise Progressive predicted:
“…the Trump roundup can be expected to be spectacular, very public and as harsh as possible. It will likely be conducted as a television spectacle, a reality show intended to send a message of mercilessness to the world that discourages all immigration, legal and otherwise.”
This prediction is horrifically borne out daily as stories emerge of brutality by masked agents of the Department of Homeland Security’s directorate of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In every corner of the United States, people suspected of illegal residence are being snatched off the streets and in courtroom corridors by anonymous men without warrants, in unmarked vehicles, with dubious justifications. Then they’re whisked away into a gulag of unaccountable and untraceable detention facilities and denied due process or the opportunity to prove their innocence—or citizenship, or legal resident status.
Lest residents of Southwest Florida believe that they are immune, their communities are in the crosshairs too, as ICE agents descend on the town of Immokalee, round up agricultural workers and simply stop vehicles on Southwest Florida roads with people they deem suspicious or who are simply the wrong color.
“For the first time there will be concentration camps on American soil and Americans will see them on their television screens.”
Of all the 2025 predictions, this one came most horrifyingly and surprisingly true. That there would be concentration camps for the regime’s undesirables was entirely predictable. But The Paradise Progressive did not foresee that the first of these camps, the archetype and model for an American gulag, would be established in its own back yard, in Collier County, Florida, in the heart of the Everglades and that it would be designated “Alligator Alcatraz.”
“These roundups and deportations will likely be fought in the courts but with its placement of obedient judges, the regime will probably plow through the court system the same way Trump plowed through his criminal cases. Those cases that reach the Supreme Court will be adjudicated by a Trump-appointed majority of justices—and he may gain more appointments as sitting justices retire.”
The US courts have proved an occasional impediment to Trump’s arbitrary actions but they also proved little more than speed bumps on the road to autocracy. Nonetheless, some of the most egregious actions were at least delayed or reconsidered as they were tried, appealed and judged.
The judiciary, established as a co-equal branch of government, was intended by the Founders as an important check and balance on the other two branches. It has not always gotten things right.
But, extraordinarily, the six-member majority of the current Supreme Court, three of whose justices were appointed by Trump and confirmed in his first administration, has not only aided, abetted and enabled dictatorship but specifically and actively sought to confirm and elevate a Trump dictatorship. They want him as king and they’ve done everything they can to ensure his unfettered rule—not governance, but rule.
Of all this Supreme Court’s decisions—and that includes its 2022 overturn of Roe v. Wade—the most fundamentally damaging one came with its ruling in Trump v. United States in 2024 holding that presidents are immune from the law in their official actions. That ruling, which overturned the concept of equal justice under law, the bedrock of American legal principle, enabled the wild, unchecked dictatorial rampage that characterized 2025.
“If Trumpflag-waving Southwest Floridians think they will be spared crippling inflation and a scarcity of goods, they should think again. At the very least the prices for the Canadian-made replacement parts for their sticker-covered pickup trucks are going to rise to the point where they’ll have to jury-rig their swamp buggies like Cubans keeping their 1959 Chevvies on the road.”
This absolutely came true. Tariffs have placed an enormous non-tax burden on the American consumer, according to both government and non-government estimates.
The rise in prices of common food items in September 2025. (Chart: CNBC)
“The accession of Donald Trump to the presidency will mean the return of what has been called ‘Trumpality,’ the Trump worldview or mindset in which objective truth has little to no value.”
Further,
“But in a broader sense, the imposition of Trumpality in the coming year will be pervasive and likely crippling to a United States whose whole success has been built on determining and responding to reality.”
Also,
“That delusional thinking will not only likely be evident this year, it will be imposed from above. It will likely affect everything from public health to weather forecasting. It will pervade the media whether mainstream, social or ideological as they both report what he asserts no matter how false and acquiesce to his version of events to avoid retaliation or retribution.”
Donald Trump’s war on reality and the media was aided and abetted by his billionaire supporters, who snapped up media properties in order to impose the Trump agenda from corporate boardrooms.
The First Amendment was not violated because Congress made no law abridging freedom of the press but the entire business infrastructure undergirding independent America media was undermined and subverted. Trump-obedient billionaires traded media properties among themselves like Pokéman cards.
The fiercely independent Washington Post of Donald and Katherine Graham became the cringing organ of Jeff Bezos, blocking the editorial board’s endorsement of Kamala Harris, cheering on Trump’s destruction of the White House East Wing, and banning alternative viewpoints from its opinion pages. The once-proud CBS television network of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite became the Trump cheerleading squad headed by Bari Weiss, a partisan, far-right columnist with no broadcast experience. The New York Times, the British Broadcasting Corporation, Wall Street Journal and over 20 media organizations were threatened by billion dollar lawsuits for reporting and broadcasting facts that Trump didn’t like. Social media platforms like Facebook ripped down their community standards to allow disinformation postings and Trump propaganda.
Many media controls had been imposed to protect the public against dangerous disinformation being spread during the COVID pandemic of 2020-2022. But that changed too, as The Paradise Progressive predicted.
“The opposition to vaccines and public health measures as evidenced by the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as Secretary of Health and Human Services, has the potential to wipe out a century of medical progress and scientific advancement in promoting public health and replace it with a brew of conspiracy theories, disbelief and even outright superstition.”
After a horrifically botched response to the COVID outbreak based on Trump’s delusional assertions that “It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear,” and his insistence that it didn’t matter, national science and public health staged a comeback under President Joe Biden. But as predicted, the Trump regime did all it could to undermine and subvert that, cutting jobs, dismissing scientists and experts and altering findings at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration.
“The war on equality in all forms is almost certain to take place on many fronts this year.”
As predicted, the war on basic equality as well as diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in all forms—already well underway in Florida—erupted with new ferocity during the year, with it being used as a club against higher educational institutions and corporations alike who faced extortionate fines and penalties for supporting equality in hiring, teaching and thinking. It was extended to the military by Secretary of War Peter Hegseth, who dismissed high-ranking female officers and eradicated monuments to black service people and heroes both at home and abroad.
“The most obvious possible Democratic presidential candidate to challenge Trump in 2028 (if there’s an election and if Trump runs again) is Gov. Gavin Newsom of California.”
And,
“The world can expect a massive Trumpist war against Newsom and the state of California starting this year and every year that Trump is president.”
Sure enough, Trump, who persisted in calling Newsom “Newscum,” embarked on a campaign of vilification and disparagement. But he didn’t predict—and The Paradise Progressive didn’t foresee—that Newsom would hit back with a campaign of his own that turned Trump’s social media postings against him with humor and pointedly funny parodies.
With his outspokenness and determination, Newsom emerged as the leader of the resistance among elected officials. He called out Trump’s autocratic moves for what they were and took concrete steps to counter them. And what were those autocratic moves? The Paradise Progressive predicted them too.
“Indeed, throughout the country expect attacks aimed at denying Democrats any possibility of ever winning any election again at any level, whether through ballot access denial or election interference in Democratic districts and cities, especially, in response to opposition to anti-migrant roundups and deportations and possible ‘sanctuary’ cities.”
The most blatant and egregious election interference was Trump’s attempt to get states to gerrymander district lines in mid-decade in order to deny Democrats seats in Congress in the 2026 elections.
The Paradise Progressive foresaw the effort but not the specific means—the idea of a mid-decade redistricting was so bizarre and unconstitutional it was beyond imagining at the outset of the year. The state of Texas immediately redrew its lines and other Trumpist states are doing the same. In Florida Gov. Ronald DeSantis (R) said he was open to the idea but concluded that Republicans wouldn’t gain that many seats. Still, as of this writing the notion hasn’t entirely been rejected.
Newsom understood the threat and launched a counterattack in California, pushing through a referendum on redistricting and proceeding to redistrict the state to counter Texas’ effort. Other Democratic states may follow.
However the Trumpist gerrymander turns out nationally, it was indicative of Trump’s determination to rig the 2026 election, stay in power no matter what, and deny Americans a genuine say in their government, as predicted at the outset of the year.
As the year began, The Paradise Progressive noted that a new triumvirate had emerged to dominate the world. In a subsequent post, it theorized about the possibility that Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping could conspire to divide the world between them and support each other’s expansionist goals and territorial ambitions. (Warning: A Trump-Putin-Xi conspiracy theory.)
But just as Rome’s triumvirate didn’t last, neither did today’s. The Paradise Progressive predicted that too.
“But also militating against the survival of this triumvirate is Trump’s inveterate lying and his lifetime record of welching on commitments and contracts. Just as a Mafia loan shark doesn’t take kindly to a deadbeat borrower, Putin and his mafia-like siloviki won’t take kindly to Trump reneging on whatever agreement they had that put him in office. The embers of this conflagration already seem to be sparking.”
What The Paradise Progressive did not foresee was the degree to which Trump used international trade tariffs as wildly and whimsically as he did, imposing and lifting them without notice or explanation. He tried to use them to punish Brazil for enforcing its laws against its own would-be dictator and Trump protégé, Jair Bolsonaro. He imposed them on Canada because the province of Ontario dared to run a television ad he didn’t like. He imposed them on China, then lifted them, then altered them, then reimposed them and then lifted them again after a phone call with President Xi Jinping. There’s no telling where they’ll stand tomorrow.
All these tariffs, which Trump regarded as a cost-free form of revenue, were in fact a form of consumer tax and drove up consumer prices, exactly as predicted.
“At least initially, this year, it’s likely to result in higher prices across the board and scarcity of goods as these men’s rivalries take the form of trade wars.”
Unforeseen was Trump’s war against Venezuela. At the beginning of the year it was Canada, Panama and Greenland that seemed to be in Trump’s crosshairs. But then American forces started destroying what were purported to be drug-smuggling boats off the coast of Venezuela, a campaign that steadily escalated.
As this is written American forces are gathering in the Caribbean in what appears to be preparation for an assault on Venezuela. But history provides a note of caution. Like Adolf Hitler’s invasion of Russia, or Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, or Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, a unilateral, Trump-commanded American assault on Venezuela has within it the possibility of a regime-changing catastrophe—and that regime very well might be Donald Trump’s.
“As the year dawns the two biggest local political stories in Southwest Florida concern criminal investigations and court cases.”
“In Collier County, on Nov. 7, multiple federal agencies searched the properties of Francis Alfred “Alfie” Oakes III, the extremely conservative, outspoken and politically active farmer and grocer.”
Further,
“An easy prediction for 2025 is that it will be a major story in Southwest Florida when a public announcement is made in this case.”
Indeed it was a major story but the outcome was different than anticipated. Oakes was never charged with any crime and the heavy hand of the law fell instead on Steven Veneziano Jr., an Oakes Farms vice president. Veneziano and six other defendants pleaded guilty to defrauding the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program by falsifying crop records.
“In Lee County to the north, resolution of accusations against Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno for possible money laundering and misappropriation of funds will be another major political story for 2025.”
“Hey Carmine, pay attention,” Romano stated in an October TikTok video directed to Marceno. “So, word on the street from your own people, a lot of your own people, is that [Anthony] Lomangino, [a major donor to both Trump and Marceno] and Pam Bondi, the Attorney General of the United States, is gonna take all this, whatever’s happened, and put it on the shelf for you. Is that true? Answer me, answer the public. Is that true?”
Since The Florida Trident report, there have not been any publicly reported developments in the case. Marceno is reportedly thinking of running for Congress in Florida’s 19th Congressional District.
As with the Oakes affair, Marceno’s ultimate fate may be resolved in the year to come.
“The prospect for 2025 is for DeSantis to keep governing the state, with an eye to his post-gubernatorial opportunities. But a position in the Trump regime seems unlikely to be one of them.”
This too turned out to be prophetic. Despite some positions being floated, DeSantis received no offers (at least none publicly announced or acknowledged) from Donald Trump. Their animus seemed to recede when Trump came to open the Alligator Alcatraz concentration camp in July and joked that “We had a little off period for a couple of days, but it didn’t last long.” But there was never any evidence of a deeper thawing of relations or a place for DeSantis in the regime in the days that followed.
When it came to the people of Florida as a whole, The Paradise Progressive predicted:
“This population will also be less healthy than in the past as public health protections are dismantled and vaccinations dismissed. Public health will be in the hands of anti-vaxxers, both nationally (Robert Kennedy Jr., as Secretary of Health and Human Services) and statewide (Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo).”
As though destroying defenses against childhood diseases and epidemics was insufficient, in May the state of Florida decided to wage war against dental hygiene by banning the addition of decay-preventing fluoride in community water, a move that was preceded by the Board of Commissioners of Collier County in February 2024.
When it came to the state legislature,
“Once again DeSantis will be ruling over a subservient, super-majority legislature that will likely do his bidding on all things with the exception of paving over state parks.”
However,
“There’s less incentive to follow the DeSantis ‘line,’ whatever that may be in the coming year but that doesn’t mean they won’t follow a basically Make America Great Again (MAGA) ideology.”
That prediction plays out every day. But another prediction has already come true:
“Of course, Trump will take no responsibility for any of this. He will no doubt blame the weakened Democrats and ‘far left Marxist radicals’ for any problems he causes. If the past is prologue, Fox News and the MAGA faithful will buy it.”
Unexpected—and inspiring
The Paradise Progressive did not cover or make predictions in the off-year gubernatorial elections in Virginia, New Jersey or the mayoral race in New York City. However, those elections proved to be stunning repudiations of Trump rule and the MAGA program even though he frantically denied that he was on the ballot and blamed the debacle on the government shutdown and lack of Republican fervor.
Nor did the repudiations occur only in those major races. Across the country, in towns, cities and counties that held elections there was a marked shift away from Trumpism and the Republican Party in what amounted to a blue wave.
The Paradise Progressive also did not anticipate the resistance to tyranny, the grassroots organizing and popular outrage that led to national “Hands Off” and “No Kings” protests that attracted progressively larger and larger crowds.
Just how impressive this development was could be seen in Naples, Fla., an otherwise deeply Trumpist town, where each event brought out more and more people in what amounted to a massive turnout for the area—and throughout Southwest Florida in places not otherwise known for their activism, like Port Charlotte and Sanibel.
But while enormous crowds turned out in major cities, perhaps the most impressive demonstration occurred in rural Okeechobee, Fla., far from large gatherings or other “No Kings” protests. There, Linda Winner, a grandmother who had never demonstrated in any protest throughout her 76 years took a stand.
“I grew up in the ‘60s and ‘70s watching all the protests, and so I said, if I’m ever going to do it, it better be now, I might not get another chance,” she told reporter Eileen Kelley of WGCU. So she stood alone on a street corner for three hours holding a “no kings” sign,
She explained her action to her son in North Carolina, who disagreed with her. “I called him to confirm that he knew that his mother loved America, to make sure that he understood that my protest today was not because I didn’t love America, but because I did,” she said.
Standing on her street corner she received a few fingers from passing motorists but also a lot of support and was treated to a free lunch at a nearby restaurant.
When the Linda Winners of the country take to the streets alone to fight dictatorship it shows that Americans still value democracy, freedom and are willing to resist—at all levels, in all places and at all ages. When they do that Americans might just all be winners.
What will this mean in the coming year?
That is something which it will take an entirely different essay to examine. But that the examination will be made at the beginning of 2026 is one prophecy almost certain to come true.
Linda Winner takes her lone stand for democracy in Okeechobee, Fla., on “No Kings” day, Oct 18, 2025. (Photo: WGCU/Eileen Kelley)
Democratic gubernatorial candidate David Jolly addresses a town hall meeting in Naples’ South Regional Library on Oct. 13. (Photo: Author)
Oct. 19, 2025 by David Silverberg
Even in retirement-heavy Naples, Fla., it takes some kind of special magic to fill a large auditorium for a political speech on a Monday afternoon.
But David Jolly managed to do exactly that when he addressed a town hall meeting at the Collier County South Regional Library on Monday, Oct. 13.
Jolly is the Democratic candidate for governor—and if the turnout, interest and enthusiasm of the crowd was any indication, this campaign and election will certainly be intense. People are fired up—and worried.
But if Jolly is worried, he gives no indication of it.
“Believe. Believe,” he told the crowd. “My wife and I would not be in this race, I pledge to you, if we did not believe that in this moment we’ve got the best shot we’ve had in 30 years to change the direction of this state. When we change the direction of Florida, we impact national politics, we give people across the country the opportunity to look to something that’s different and better. Believe. We here believe.”
It seemed like he had the audience believing him.
It’s one thing to believe—it’s another thing to back up that belief with data, money and, ultimately, votes.
But Jolly thinks he’s got the goods.
Pure Florida
Jolly is probably as Florida as it’s possible to be for someone other than an indigenous native. He was born on Halloween, 1972, in Dunedin and grew up in Dade City.
His father was a Baptist preacher and he was raised on Baptism’s precepts, which he has made clear still affect him as “a person of deep faith.”
It was his higher education that took him out of state, to Emory University in Georgia and George Mason University in Virginia, where he graduated with a juris doctor degree cum laude.
A Republican, Jolly joined the staff of Republican Rep. Bill Young in 1994, who at the time was representing central Florida’s 10th congressional district. Jolly rose through the various staff ranks but left the office in 2007 to work as a consultant and lobbyist. When Young died in office in 2013 at the age of 82, Jolly ran in a special election in March 2014 to succeed him, and won a narrow, 2 percent victory. He then won the general election in his own right in November without either a Republican primary challenger or a Democratic opponent.
As a representative, Jolly trended what might be called center-right, favoring what was the standard Republican litany of positions. He had campaigned to repeal the Affordable Care Act and supported overturning Roe versus Wade. In office he was in favor of tighter border controls, more restrictive vetting of immigrants and worked to maintain the prison in Guantanamo Bay.
But he also veered more centrist on other issues, arguing that regulations were appropriate to keep guns away from criminals, despite his support for the Second Amendment. He also supported the legality of same-sex marriage as part of his belief in personal liberty and opposition to government interference. At the same time, he said his Christian faith made him a believer in traditional marriage.
More particularly for Florida, he supported a ban on oil drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and sought to extend the National Flood Insurance Program to cover businesses and second homes.
As the 2016 election approached, he considered a run for the US Senate seat held by Marco Rubio when Rubio was considering running for another office—but Rubio changed his mind, decided to stay in the Senate and Jolly ran again for the 13th.
This time he was opposed by former governor Charlie Crist, who had transitioned from Republican to independent to Democrat. Still a canny politician, Crist narrowly won the election by 51.9 percent to Jolly’s 48.1 percent.
Changing parties
David Jolly in repose. (Photo: Author)
There was never a single, revelatory moment when Jolly suddenly decided to switch from the Republican Party to the Democratic, he told The Paradise Progressive.
“It was more a journey. It really was,” he said. “I mean, I was a Bush 41 Republican who fought the Tea Party, right? I was an appropriator who voted to keep the government open when they wanted to shut it down. On constitutional issues like marriage equality and eventually on reproductive freedom, I was moving away. On guns, I was moving away.”
He smiles wryly: “I say Republicans didn’t want me and Democrats didn’t need me.”
And then there was the presence and over time Donald J. Trump’s domination of the Republican Party. Jolly was no Trumper. “I fought back and lost that,” he reflects.
“I knew the fight had been lost in my mind, that the party I once belonged to was never coming back and that certainly I was not a sufficient leader to try to bring it back. And I spent six years as an independent, which was the most informative part of my political life, to be untethered from a major party, major party dogma.”
It was at the time he and his second wife were expecting their first daughter that he considered leaving the Republican Party. When he did it, he did so in a very public way.
“I basically announced on Bill Maher that I was leaving,” he said of his Oct. 5, 2018 appearance on Maher’s program. “I said I wanted our kids to know, I wanted my daughter to know, that it’s important to fight for what you believe in. But there came a moment where I was accepting that I wanted her to also see sometimes there are fights you walk away from.”
Or as he put it then, “Somebody else can fight for the dignity of the Republican Party now—it’s not my fight anymore.”
Jolly went on to become a political independent and a commentator for MSNBC, where he was consistently critical of Trump.
Then, this year, after making campaign-like appearances around Florida, including an appearance and speech in Naples on May 17, Jolly announced on June 5 that he was running for governor as a Democrat.
Jolly is well aware that there are critics who question his commitment to the Democratic Party and its principles.
He himself said, “I’m in a very post-ideological space. I really am. I think the left-right spectrum confines us and restricts us.”
However, his time as an independent gave him perspective, “I just got to look at what are the big answers to our big problems?” he said.
What is more, as he said to the crowd at his town hall in Naples: “Is it okay to change your mind?” While the crowd applauded and cheered he concluded: “I actually think it is.”
David Jolly speaks outside the Collier County Courthouse on May 17 of this year. (Photo: Author)
A stark contrast
It’s hardly surprising that as a Democrat, Jolly’s positions are starkly opposite those of Donald Trump or Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) or his leading likely opponent, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-19-Fla.).
But more than partisan, his positions are aimed squarely at the concerns of everyday Floridians and away from broad, national ideological questions.
Overall affordability and the high cost of insurance are key problems to be tackled, in his view.
“The property insurance crisis is the primary reason so many people in Florida are struggling to afford a home,” notes his platform. “From renters to retirees to homeowners, the burden of property insurance continues to make housing costs in Florida unaffordable for many.” He is pledging to make alleviating that problem a key focus of his governorship.
Notably, he is pro-choice. “Reproductive healthcare decisions should be made between women and their doctors, not politicians,” states his platform. He wants Florida to codify the same rules that held during the Roe v. Wade era.
He also recognizes the reality of climate change. “Florida should accept the science of climate change, protect our beaches and state parks, and invest in resiliency throughout the state,” according to his platform.
While supporting the Second Amendment, he thinks that Floridians have suffered enough from gun violence and lax gun laws. As his platform states: “Florida should ban the sale of assault weapons, require universal and comprehensive background checks, explore licensing, and preserve and expand the red flag laws enacted following the tragedy at Parkland.”
The litany goes down the line. But most of all, he emphasizes, he’s running on a platform that transcends party dogma.
And perhaps one of his most compelling positions is his call to treat everyone with “kindness, dignity and respect.”
“Culture wars divide and demonize,” states his campaign platform. “Florida should reject the politics of division and hate, and instead create a home where everyone is valued, respected, and welcomed. We should become a place where everyone is given dignity and equity, regardless of race, creed, or color, and regardless of who you love or the God you worship. Florida should embrace our immigrant community and celebrate their contributions to our state’s culture and economy. It’s time to create a Florida for all people.”
And there’s another promise he makes when it comes to culture, as he confided to his Naples audience.
“I’ll also tell you, one of the things I want to do when we get elected governor is bring back art to the state of Florida,” he said to enthusiastic cheers. “I want to open the governor’s mansion through loan agreements with major art installations. Bring back the art that lets us see who we are, who we could be, who we’ve been. Test the boundaries, bring back culture and theater, and open it up to the people of Florida. Open it up to school kids and everyone else. Otherwise, who else wants to go to Tallahassee?”
But can he win?
Jolly is running in a state where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats by 1.4 million, where the Republican governor won by 22 points in 2022, where his likely opponent is endorsed by Trump and has $31.5 million in campaign funds.
And yet Jolly is not only confident he can win, he radiates that confidence and can convey it to a crowd.
“We’re seeing it on the ground,” he said in response to a question about his path to victory. What’s more, “we’re also seeing it in the data.” Polling backs this up, he insisted. “I feel very comfortable saying we’re in the margin of error. We have a poll that has us leading by one [percentage point]. Donalds’ [poll] has him leading by four.”
But it’s the overall political environment that fuels his certainty. “So very critically, the environment and the cycle is one of dramatic change,” he said.
Why? “It’s because people are angry, they’re worried about their economy, and they don’t trust incumbent politicians right now. And so, yes, for us, that made the decision to get in this race. I really mean this, having been involved in probably 30 races—as a candidate in only three or four—I have zero interest in chasing a generic ballot, as I say. I know there’s an opportunity for change in Florida.
“And layer into that, we have a generational affordability crisis that truly is hitting Republicans as much as it’s hitting Democrats. And so that contributes to this environment.”
He pointed out that recent special elections in Florida have swung Democratic by 15 and 16 points. It has led DeSantis to avoid special elections, for example for his appointed lieutenant governor, Jay Collins, or in counties like Palm Beach. It’s also a trend throughout the country.
“This is a race that allows an Andy Beshear to get elected in Kentucky, a race that allows Steve Bullock to get elected in Montana, and a race that allows David Jolly to get elected in the state of Florida,” he told the crowd in Naples.
But he also acknowledged that the odds present a direct challenge to him: “I have to build a campaign that can win in this moment and win in this cycle.”
That also means closing the money gap. Donalds is reporting $31.5 million in the bank. Jolly has raised $2 million.
But Jolly sees an upward trend and points out that it’s still early in the race.
“We have small dollar donors from all 50 states,” he said in our interview. “Some of the largest investors in American politics have agreed to support us. But others are just ‘wait and see,’ right? There’s no reason for them to spend money in October of ‘25.”
What’s more, the Republican fundraising advantage may not endure.
“I would also say Republicans are very likely about to have a bloodbath of a primary and spend all their money against each other. And what I’m begging Democrats is—and that’s why I said it over and over today—if I’m insufficient, make me stronger.” In other words, he wants to have the dialogue that will enable him to learn and become more effective.
He also dismisses the impact of Trump’s endorsement of Donalds in the general election.
“With a state exhausted by MAGA, it hurts more than it helps,” he observed.
He continued: “The way I look at this race is that 33 percent of the state is probably unavailable to us. I’ll make my case as hard as I can. But if 39 percent of voters are registered as Republicans, I believe we will get 15 percent [of that].” If he can win over that percentage of Republican voters he can negate six points of likely Donalds supporters.
“So I do believe 33 percent of the state is loyally behind Donalds and Donald Trump. But in the midst of a dramatic change environment, to be able to have 67 percent of the state available to us, I feel very, very good about that.”
The possibility still exists that Jolly could face another Democratic challenger for governor. Right now he’s the only Democratic candidate and both in his speech and interview he called on his fellow Democrats not to be part of what has traditionally been called “the circular firing squad”
“Be a part of how we win,” he urged. “Don’t be a part of how you tear us down. Whether that means we have a primary or not, we’ll see. Family conversations aren’t all bad. They can be good. But we just have to remember that this is about Democrats leading a new coalition in American politics. And the only way we do that is if people look at the Democratic Party and see something they want to be a part of. If we fight each other for the next year, nobody’s going to be interested in that.”
Meanwhile, Jolly is taking a leaf from another former Democratic Florida candidate. He said his strategy is to go into communities across the state no matter their apparent ideological tendencies.
“I’m going to do what Lawton Chiles did in 1970. We’re going to go everywhere, absolutely everywhere. Deep red communities, frankly like Naples.” In 1970 Lawton Chiles, campaigning for the US Senate, did a 1,000 mile trek across Florida, visiting every community en route and talking to people along the way. He won the Senate seat and then went on to be elected governor in 1991, passing away in 1998.
Similarly, Jolly intends to visit as many communities as possible and once in those communities he intends to challenge Republicans to reveal their proposed solutions.
“Republican, what are you willing to do?’ he said. “I think we need a safe cap for insurance [i.e., ensuring that insurance can cover all contingencies]. Republicans will call it socialism. So what’s your plan? Can you convince enough people in Naples that you’re going to reduce their homeowner’s insurance, Byron? I don’t think you can. Can you convince enough people that they’re safe from school shootings? I don’t think you can, Byron. So we have to be willing to go into conservative media environments, into conservative communities and have conversations that not only express our values but ask the other side to be held accountable for their view and for their vision.”
A movement within a movement?
A demonstrator at the “No Kings” protest in Naples, Fla., on Saturday, Oct. 18, shows her support for David Jolly amidst the signs opposing Donald Trump. (Photo: Author)
There’s no doubt that Jolly projects a confidence that has been sorely lacking among Florida Democrats ever since Trump won the state in 2016 and DeSantis took the governorship in 2018. It’s a tonic for the crowds that come to hear him and it has electrified audiences, particularly in Naples.
Jolly has the experience, the objectivity and the analytical capabilities to be fully aware of the obstacles he faces, particularly in a state and a country being battered by rising authoritarianism, repression and anti-democratic tricks.
Asked if he worries about threats to the upcoming elections he acknowledges the dangers but is determined to press on.
“I still have faith, but I worry about it,” he admits. “And I worry about other areas of interference shy of Election Day.
“I worry, for instance, as a candidate, that the Trump administration is going to investigate major Democratic candidates across the country. And I worry about that on a personal level. I know there’s nothing [I’ve done] that merits an investigation. But it’s easy for what I believe is the current posture of the president to launch an investigation.”
He also worries that Trump could declare a national emergency on some pretext shortly before the election and somehow try to stop it. But he continues to campaign on the presumption that the election will be free, fair and honest.E
He is also fully aware of the physical danger to candidates and public figures in the current atmosphere. After the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Jolly said that he sat down with his wife and his team and had a conversation about whether to stay in the race. But he—and they—decided the stakes were too big and the outcome too important not to keep campaigning.
He also wanted to send a message to his children. “I guess with our kids, I wanted them to know that the story I’m telling is true. I want them to know we’re trying to change the world. And that, win or lose, it’s a gift.”
Jolly has set an arduous task for himself. His is a campaign that is truly grassroots, he will be campaigning everywhere in a big state; his Naples town hall was already his 81st campaign event and the campaign is still in its early stages. He knows how intense it’s going to get as time goes on and especially in a year’s time when the race has tightened and is nearing the finish line.
But if Jolly is fazed by the prospect, he doesn’t show it. If anything it fuels his resolve.
“I know what is within our power, which is to build a coalition strong enough to win overwhelmingly,” he said emphatically. “And I know that sounds like a wild aspiration in Florida, but it’s why we’re in it. It’s why we’re in this, because if we can build a big enough coalition in Florida to overcome that, then I think that people have spoken.”
He also knows the part he must play to win and that it’s long, exhausting and potentially dangerous. “But,” he continues, “if we win, it’s because Florida’s voters have decided enough is enough—and we’re going to overwhelmingly take back the state.”
A Republican seaside stampede in Florida’s 19th Congressional District. (Illustration: AI for TPP/ChatGPT)
October 7, 2025 by David Silverberg
Correction: The correct name of the company owned by Jim Schwartzel is Sun Broadcasting, which has no ownership stake in WINK TV.
What was promising to be a messy but obscure congressional race for Florida’s 19th Congressional District was suddenly catapulted into national prominence on Tuesday, Oct. 1, when Madison Cawthorn, a 30-year-old former North Carolina congressman and media bad boy announced that he would be running.
Because of his past behavior and erratic record, national and local media suddenly focused on him and the district. But in fact he’s an unlikely candidate with long odds in a crowded field.
The real focus of all this attention is the seat being vacated by Rep. Byron Donalds (R-19-Fla.), who is seeking the governorship.
As of right now there are nine declared Republican aspirants to the congressional seat and a single Democrat.
It’s very reminiscent of the 2020 congressional election when at one point there were 12 Republican candidates scrambling for the seat of retiring Republican Francis Rooney. He stepped down after two terms and the unpardonable sin of saying that the evidence should be considered in Donald Trump’s impeachment trial.
From that scrimmage (which ultimately narrowed to nine candidates) Donalds emerged the victor. Now the seat’s up for grabs again, with a whole new cast of characters—and with a little less than a year until the Republican primary election on Aug. 18, 2026, there may be new entrants.
It needs to be emphasized that it is still very early in the election cycle. Some candidates have not yet posted websites explaining their proposals and positions. They have not yet filed Federal Election Commission campaign finance reports. Nor have they all registered with the Florida Department of State. Candidates have until noon on Friday, April 24 of next year to qualify and more may appear.
This article will survey just the Republican candidates, their backgrounds and platforms. A separate article will evaluate and analyze the race. A third article will profile Democrat Howard Sapp.
But first, a look at the district.
The 19th Congressional District
A map of Florida’s 19th Congressional District. (Map: Ballotpedia)
The District is older, whiter and slightly richer than the rest of the country.
It has a population of 809,197 people according to one estimate based on Census data. That population is 67 percent White, 21 percent Hispanic and 7 percent Black. The median age is 53 years, which is 25 percent higher than in the rest of Florida and 1.4 times higher than in the entire United States. Women represent about 51 percent of its population.
At $52,402 per year it has a higher per capita income than both Florida and the United States and at $76,248 its median income is about the same as the rest of the country but a little higher than the rest of Florida. Even so, it has about a 12 percent poverty rate.
The Cook Political Report, the authoritative survey of congressional districts, rates it solidly Republican. For the 2026 election the Cook Partisan Voter Index is rating it R+14, meaning that in the past two presidential elections, the district’s results were 14 percentage points more Republican than the national average, making it the 88th most Republican district nationally.
The district encompasses two counties, Lee and Collier, both of which are majority Republican in registered voters. In Lee County, of 508,919 registered voters, 48 percent are Republican, 21.9 percent are Democratic, and 29.9 percent are registered as “other,” according to figures from the Lee County Election Supervisor. In Collier County, of 259,982 registered voters, 55.2 percent are Republican, 19.3 percent are Democratic, 22.4 percent have no party affiliation and 2.9 percent are registered to other parties, according to figures from the Collier County Supervisor of Elections.
This is the district that the following candidates are vying to represent in the US House of Representatives.
They are listed in alphabetical order, according to last name.
Madison Cawthorn
A state trooper confronts Madison Cawthorn at the scene of his most recent car crash on April 14, 2025. (Image: TikTok)
The instant he announced that he was running for Congress on Oct. 1, Cawthorn stole the media spotlight in Southwest Florida politics.
The reason is that he previously held the seat for North Carolina’s 11th District from 2021 to 2023. Currently separated from Christina Bayardelle, his wife of one year (from 2020 to 2021), the 30-year old Cawthorn made headlines and raised eyebrows during his brief congressional tenure.
In that time he carved out a role for himself as an extreme, vocal Trumpist and conspiracy theorist who made unsubstantiated assertions and hurled insults at opponents, journalists and fellow Republicans.
He voted to overturn the results of the 2020 election and addressed the “Stop the Steal” rally on the Ellipse that led to the attack on the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Then-Rep. Madison Cawthorn addresses the Stop the Steal rally on the Ellipse in Washington, DC on Jan. 6, 2021. (Image: Madison Cawthorn on X)
His most infamous statement was his assertion in a March 2022 interview that he had been invited to an orgy by a fellow Republican lawmaker (unnamed at the time and ever since) and that he had seen prominent politicians using cocaine in front of him.
He was denounced by fellow Republicans, was the subject of numerous calls for ethics investigations and was the focus of multiple allegations of financial improprieties, favoritism, and House rules violations.
Cawthorn was defeated in a North Carolina Republican primary in 2022, after which he announced that “It’s time for the rise of the new right, it’s time for Dark MAGA to truly take command,” with “Dark MAGA” generally understood to represent vengeful Trumpism.
It was after this loss that Cawthorn purchased a $1.1 million home in Cape Coral and moved there, registering as a Florida voter in 2023.
As he states on his campaign website, “Florida gave me a second chance, and now I’m running for Congress to fight for faith, family, freedom, and the America First values we believe in. Washington is full of snakes, but I’m ready to drain the swamp and defend Florida.” He calls himself “an unapologetic conservative and one of President Trump’s strongest allies.”
As of this writing, Cawthorn was not yet registered with the Florida Department of State as a candidate.
He has, however, considerable familiarity with Florida—and Florida law enforcement.
It was near Daytona Beach, Fla., in 2014 during a Spring Break trip that he lost the use of his legs in a car accident. He was a passenger and the injury left him dependent on a wheelchair. More recently, on April 14, 2025 Cawthorn was the driver when his 2021 Mercedes rear-ended a Florida Highway Patrol car on Interstate 75 in Collier County. He was cited for driving without a license on Aug.19, 2025 and then arrested on Sept. 10 when he failed to appear for his court date.
Madison Cawthorn following his Sept. 10, 2025 arrest. (Photo:LCSO)
Chris Collins
Chris Collins (center) leaves a New York courthouse following his conviction for insider trading in 2019. (Image: ABC7 News)
Like Cawthorn, Christopher Carl “Chris” Collins is another former Republican congressman with a criminal record.
Collins, 75, represented New York’s 27th Congressional District, the area around Buffalo, NY from 2013 to 2019. He was the first member of Congress to endorse Trump for president in 2016.
In August 2018 Collins and his son were arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for insider trading and making false statements.
The charges related to a company called Innate Immunotherapeutics, where Collins recruited investors while in office. In 2017, when he received news that the company’s medication to treat multiple sclerosis had failed its tests, Collins called his son from a lawn party at the Trump White House and told him to sell the stock before the news was made public. By doing this his son and another close relative avoided nearly $800,000 in losses when the stock’s price plummeted 92 percent the next day.
Collins was charged while he was in the midst of a re-election campaign. He suspended the campaign, then restarted it, then went on to a very narrow victory in the November 2018 election and took office in January 2019.
However, Collins didn’t last long in his seat. On Sept. 30, 2019 he announced his resignation to take effect the next day and that same day pleaded guilty to the charges against him.
“By virtue of his position, Collins helped write the laws of this country and acted as if the law didn’t apply to him,” said US Attorney Geoffrey Berman, after Collins pleaded guilty.
Collins was barred by the Security and Exchange Commission from serving as an officer or director of any public company. In October 2020 he began serving a 26-month prison sentence. But that didn’t last long either—he was pardoned by Trump on Dec. 22, 2020.
Collins purchased a home on Marco Island and told a judge in 2019: “I’m now a Florida resident and will be FL for a while as the press settles down and moves on.” He served his prison time in a federal prison in Pensacola.
In June, Collins was one of the first candidates to announce his run for the 19th District shortly after Donalds launched his bid for governor. He is listed as a candidate with the Florida Department of State.
As of this writing Collins did not have a campaign website, nor had he posted any policy positions related to Congressional District 19.
John Fratto
John Fratto as he appeared in his 2024 campaign rap video. (Image: Campaign)
John “Johnny” Fratto, 46, is switching his sights to the 19th Congressional District from the 26th, where he ran for Congress unsuccessfully in 2024.
Fratto’s chief claim to fame in that race was a campaign rap video extolling Fratto’s Trumpist virtues that was filmed at Oakes’ Seed to Table market and was meant to appeal to the district’s Hispanic voters.
“America’s first bloodline mafia congressman versus deep state communist,” said the opening lines of the rap, which continued with a chorus that sounded like: “The man knows, voting Johnny Fratto.”
It didn’t work. Fratto was crushed by Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-26-Fla.), who won by a lopsided 73.2 percent in the Republican primary to Fratto’s anemic 16.5 percent, despite Fratto’s endorsement by local farmer, grocer and political kingpin Francis Alfred “Alfie” Oakes III and Republican political operative Roger Stone.
In 2024, responding to questions from the website Ballotpedia, Fratto stated that he was born in Des Moines, Iowa but then seems to contradict himself with the statement: “Originally from Southern California, I moved my family to Southern Florida to be close to my wife’s family, and to raise my kids in a state that will help them become hard working, honest adults.”
He listed his career experience as “working as an entrepreneur.” He has also claimed to have been an executive producer for TV and movies.
As of this writing, Fratto did not have a campaign website for his District 19 run but he had announced his candidacy on Facebook. He did not post any specific policies or proposals but he has made clear his support for Trump and his agenda in the past. He says he wants to restore the country to “its traditional values.”
Fratto is registered as a candidate with the Florida Department of State.
John Fratto (left) is endorsed by Alfie Oakes (right) in the 2024 campaign rap video. (Image: Campaign)
Ola Nesheiwat Hawatmeh is a registered candidate with the Florida Department of State.
Hawatmeh does not have a campaign website.
A LinkedIn profile states that she is a senior policy advisor, chief executive officer and founder of Mom Me Makeover and OLA Style, apparently a sole proprietorship. She is also listed as a senior policy advisor to Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-5-Ind.) as of December 2024.
The only policy statement attributable to Hawatmeh is an undated Instagram video post, made from an unidentified airport when Hawatmeh was on her way to a week of lobbying in Washington, DC on behalf of the non-profit Moms for America, a national, conservative education advocacy group.
In that post Hawatmeh earnestly says: “Today, reading about 20,000 migrants in Springfield, Ohio, killing dogs, killing cats, ducks in our parks, no accountability. It is our country. Illegals are being placed before American citizens. No accountability for them, but we have to be held accountable if we don’t pay our taxes, if we don’t pay our bills. We have no say as to who our neighbors are now? You want to place illegals in our neighborhood. We have to have a say. Never give up, never give in. Speak up. It’s our America, it’s our country.”
Hawatmeh’s connection to the 19th Congressional District is unclear from any online sources or statements. Nor does she make clear that she resides in the district or the state.
Catalina Lauf
Catalina Lauf in 2023 at a natural products exposition. (Photo: Campaign)
In 2022 Lauf ran for Congress in Illinois’ 11th Congressional District but lost to Democrat Bill Foster with a total of 43.5 percent to Foster’s 56.5 percent.
In 2020 she lost the Republican congressional primary in a field of seven candidates in District 14 to Jim Oberweis who garnered 25.6 percent of the vote to Lauf’s 20.1 percent. (More about Oberweis below.)
Lauf issued a statement to Florida Politics when she announced her Florida run on Oct. 2, the day after Cawthorn made his announcement.
“Southwest Florida deserves bold, principled leadership — leaders in the mold of Byron Donalds, who stand up fearlessly for our values, and who are champions of President Trump’s America First agenda. I was proud to work for President Trump’s administration and now I’m running to continue that tradition of strength, courage, and service for the people of FL-19.”
As of this writing Lauf was not yet registered as a candidate with the Florida Department of State. She had posted a campaign Facebook page but did not yet have a dedicated campaign website.
On the Facebook page she stated that “Like many Americans, Catalina is concerned with the young socialist progressive wing in Congress.”
Dylan Modarelli
Dylan Modarelli (Photo: Campaign)
According to his LinkedIn profile, Dylan Modarelli is chief executive officer of Empire Gems in Fort Myers. He lives in Cape Coral and is in his mid-30s. He’s married with one child.
He is originally from North Bergan, New Jersey but does not state on his professional campaign website how long he has lived in Florida. Nor does he mention any prior political or government experience.
Modarelli’s candidacy is registered with the Florida Department of State.
“I come from hardship, raised in a home where giving up was never an option,” he writes. “When I was just five years old, I lost my father to a heroin overdose, leaving my mother to raise me alone while relying on family donations to survive. Those early struggles taught me resilience, empathy, and the belief that our circumstances do not define our future.”
Without providing dates, he states that he served as a police officer (no mention of where), then entered the emerald trade, building a business.
He’s taking a Trumpist/populist approach. As he says on his Facebook campaign page, he’s “pro-life, pro-freedom, pro-guns.”
“I’m ready to fight. I’m tired of the grifters, the career politicians, and the power hungry elites who have forgotten the people they swore to serve,” he says in a video. “Washington has turned into a playground for the connected and the corrupt, while hardworking Americans are left behind. I’m not here to play their games. I’m here to break them. I’m here to stand up for the working man, the struggling families, the seniors, the veterans, and the forgotten communities. We’ve been ignored for too long, and I refuse to sit quietly while they sell out our future. It’s time to send a fighter to Congress who answers to the people, not the lobbyists. This is our fight and I’m just getting started.”
Unlike most of the other candidates, Modarelli has a platform with defined positions on a variety of issues.
Asked in a Ballotpedia questionnaire what areas of public policy he was most passionate about, Modarelli responded, “I’m passionate about protecting animals. I believe no animal should be killed just because it’s unwanted. I stand firmly against euthanizing healthy animals in shelters.” Indeed, on his campaign website he lists ending “kill shelters” as his third most important issue after promoting affordable housing and declaring war on fentanyl.
One particularly noteworthy issue that Modarelli lists is ending private, for-profit prisons. Florida currently operates 12 for-profit prisons and two concentration camps.
As Modarelli states: “The prison system should focus on justice and rehabilitation not corporate profit. I will fight to end for-profit prisons that prioritize filling beds over public safety, turning incarceration into a money-making scheme.” He adds: “It’s time to bring prisons under public control and ensure they serve the people, not shareholders.”
Jim Oberweis
Jim Oberweis during a lobbying trip to Washington in June 2025. (Image: Fox4News)
Jim Oberweis, 79, is a veteran politician, with a mixed record of wins and losses in his native Aurora, Illinois.
Prior to politics he worked as a teacher and a financial services advisor before buying and running his family’s dairy, which had a product line of what Oberweis calls “the richest ice cream in the world.”
Oberweis began his political career in 2004 when he ran for the Republican nomination for US Senate but lost. In 2012 when he ran for the Illinois state Senate and won in District 25. He made another bid for the US Senate in 2014 but lost to Democrat Dick Durbin. He returned to the state Senate in 2012, was reelected in 2016 and rose to the position of Minority Whip.
In 2020, Oberweis ran for the Republican nomination in the Illinois 14th Congressional District, the area of Chicago’s western suburbs, centered around Aurora.
In that election he faced Catalina Lauf, who is running in the current District 19 election (see above). In a field of seven candidates, Oberweis beat Lauf, who came in third, with only 20.1 percent of the vote to Oberweis’ 25.6 percent.
However, Oberweis lost in the general election to Democrat Lauren Underwood, whom Oberweis claims stole the election.
“As of election night he had won against his Democrat incumbent opponent and was sent to Washington for New Member Orientation where he met Byron Donalds, also a newly elected Congressman,” states Oberweis’ third-person account of the election on his campaign website. “But when 20,000 previously uncounted mail-in ballots were counted, he had lost. The uncounted ballots were never initialed by an election judge as required under Illinois law but were counted anyway. After 3 days of new member orientation Jim was told he might as well go home because things did not look good.”
Oberweis thought he was permanently done with politics and, as the website puts it: “Jim went home, packed his bags and moved permanently to Bonita Springs where he and wife have owned a condominium for 16 years, and became a full-time Florida resident.”
However, with Donalds’ quest for the governorship, Oberweis decided to try again.
Oberweis is a conservative, Trumpist Republican so most of his positions reflect orthodox Trumpism. However, he does weigh in on the local environment by calling for protection of the Everglades. He says more needs to be done to protect against the polluting runoff from cane sugar processing.
“We need to return the natural southerly flow of water through the Everglades which can help reduce the threat of red tide and provide more fresh drinking water,” he states on his website. “Mother Nature is nonpartisan. Hurricanes bearing down on your home don’t care about your political beliefs. We need to do what we can to mitigate damage from future hurricanes.”
As of publication time, Oberweis had not yet responded to a question about his position on Alligator Alcatraz, which opponents say injures the Everglades’ natural environment. He is listed as a candidate by the Florida Department of State.
Oberweis has also made a major commitment to his campaign with $2 million in personal loans and outside donations that raise his total to $2.12 million.
Mike Pedersen
Mike Pedersen takes his leap into politics. (Photo: Campaign via Gulf Coast News)
When most aspirants “jump into the race” it means they’re just announcing that they’re running for office. In May, Mike Pedersen literally jumped out of an airplane and parachuted to earth to make his mark.
Pedersen is a retired US Marine with a 20-year record of active service including 66 combat missions during Operation Desert Storm and deployments all over the world.
Mike Pedersen. (Image: Gulf Coast News)
He graduated from the US Naval Academy in 1979, which would put his age in the 60s, although this is not confirmed on his website or in answers to questions sent to him by The Paradise Progressive. His wife was born in the Philippines, he has three children and eight grandchildren.
He has lived in Cape Coral for 26 years and worked as a pharmaceutical salesman after his active duty, focusing, he states, “on women’s healthcare across Southwest Florida”—although he doesn’t state among his positions whether he supports women’s right to choose abortion.
His positions are, otherwise, conventionally Trumpist: America first, an unmatched military, tightly restricted elections, protection of the Second Amendment, debt reduction, tight borders, a promise to “fight to protect our kids from radical agendas in the classroom and in sports” and “Continue the DOGE Mission” to achieve government efficiency. He does not list any local issues among his concerns on his website.
Jim Schwartzel
Jim Schwartzel attending the Press Club of Southwest Florida. (Photo: Author)
There is no other Republican candidate that is as purely Southwest Florida-born, bred and raised as Jim Schwartzel. A native of the area, he attended Bishop Verot Catholic High School in Fort Myers and Stetson University in DeLand, Florida.
Schwartzel, 49, is a media entrepreneur whom some media outlets refer to as a “mogul.” He announced his candidacy in April and is listed as a candidate by the Florida Department of State.
He’s president of Sun Broadcasting based in Fort Myers, which owns five local radio stations and four television stations. He also owns Gulfshore Life Media, which publishes the magazines Gulfshore Life, Gulfshore Business and The Naples Press. The financial data website Quiver Quantitative puts his net worth at $15.94 million. (Full disclosure: This author writes a monthly, non-political column for The Naples Press.)
Schwartzel is very conservative and does all he can to let the world know it.
This is reflected in his media holdings, which include radio station 92.5 FM Fox News, an all-talk conservative radio station based in Fort Myers.
Another expression of this is the country-western music radio station 93.7 FM, branded as “Trump Country,” whose history provides an interesting snapshot of the Southwest Florida political climate.
On Sept. 16, 2020 the station flipped from a rock and roll format to country-western and renamed itself “Trump Country.” The format lasted only three months. After Trump lost the election, it switched to country-western “Hell Yeah 93.7” under the call letters WHEL. The station went off the air during Hurricane Ian in 2022 and when it returned it was in a Latino current hit format. It then resumed as “Hell Yeah” on October 21, playing contemporary hits. On Inauguration Day 2025 at noon it switched back to calling itself “Trump Country.”
Given his conservative history, it’s no surprise that Schwartzel’s platform is all-out Trumpist. He states that he’s running for Congress “to give President Donald J. Trump the support he needs and to fight for the conservative values that make Southwest Florida strong.” He claims to be anti-career politician and “a straight-talking outsider” who will fight the standard array of MAGA-perceived threats that include “the ruling class of career politicians,” “socialist policies” and “outside political interest groups.”
When it comes to local issues, Schwartzel lists two: water and infrastructure.
On water, he states that he’ll “support common-sense water management policies” but “not the agendas of environmental extremists or special interest groups.”
On roads, he pledges to “push for funding to complete the projects necessary to reduce traffic congestion and enhance safety… .”
Schwartzel has loaned his campaign $1 million, bringing its total to $1.2 million. But while that still trails Oberweis’ total, he expects to surpass it by the end of the year.
To come:
Analyzing where it all stands, what it all means and where it’s all going
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, center, speaks with Mayor Teresa Heitmann of Naples, Florida, and City Manager Gary Young on the city’s damaged historic pier on Aug. 29. (Photo:DHS/Tia Dufour)
Sept. 29, 2025 by David Silverberg
Who would have thought that sleepy, obscure Southwest Florida, including Collier County and the City of Naples, would move to the forefront of national attention under the second administration of President Donald Trump?
First, there was the establishment of the Alligator Alcatraz concentration camp in far eastern Collier County. Implemented by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), Alligator Alcatraz has drawn national scrutiny, condemnation, lawsuits and opposition. As intended, it has been a model for a whole gulag archipelago of anti-migrant concentration camps rising throughout the nation. Its fate is uncertain.
But now there’s a new focus: the City of Naples pier, which was destroyed in 2022’s Hurricane Ian.
New developments in the restoration of the Naples pier also serve to highlight the story of the Fort Myers Beach pier—and how each one is being treated illuminates larger trends in America today and the way government now operates.
Kristi Noem and the Naples pier
The current state of the Naples pier, seen over the shoulder of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem during her visit to Naples on Aug. 29. (Photo: Kristi Noem/Instagram)
For those unfamiliar with it, the City of Naples is an incorporated municipality of roughly 20,000 people. It sits on the Gulf of Mexico at the southwestern tip of Florida and is primarily a tourist and leisure destination. Always a winter haven for the wealthy, its attractiveness to the millionaire—and billionaire—class has grown in recent years.
Among its attractions, Naples has an iconic pier that extends into the Gulf. Originally used for the offloading of supplies when Naples was founded and developed starting in the 1880s, it subsequently became a tourist attraction, a place above the beach to stroll and fish.
The Naples pier in 2020. (Photo: Author)
The pier has been destroyed by hurricanes several times, most recently by Hurricane Ian in 2022.
After Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem visited Naples on Aug. 29, she immediately ordered $12 million in federal funds for its rebuilding, granted by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which is part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that she heads.
It emerges that the grant was the result of city lobbying and the intervention of a major Naples-based Noem donor.
The article was published last Friday, Sept. 26, by the non-profit investigative journalism newsroom, ProPublica, which, as it states, “investigates abuses of power.” ProPublica is known for its meticulous journalism. The article is based on emails and records obtained through public records requests, as well as interviews by its three authors: Pulitzer Prize winner Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott and Alex Mierjeski.
The article details how Naples Mayor Theresa Heitmann, frustrated by delays in getting the pier addressed, contacted Naples cardiologist Dr. Sinan Gursoy, who had been a $25,000 donor to Noem when she was governor of South Dakota.
At Gursoy’s urging, “Noem flew to Naples on a government plane to tour the pier herself. She then stayed for the weekend and got dinner with the donor, local cardiologist Sinan Gursoy, at the French restaurant Bleu Provence,” according to the article. Noem stayed the weekend at the Naples Bay Resort & Marina.
She toured the wrecked pier with Heitmann and City Manager Gary Young.
Afterwards she posted on Instagram: “The iconic Naples Pier was destroyed in 2022, and the city is still waiting on answers from FEMA. They couldn’t even get permission to remove the old pier. I saw this failure first-hand today with Mayor Heitmann and Gary Young, and now the project is back on track.
“Americans deserve better than years of red tape and failed disaster responses. Under @POTUS Trump, this incompetency ends.”
It is important to note that the article does not allege any illegalities or criminal activity by any party.
However, it states: “Noem’s actions in Naples suggest the injection of political favoritism into an agency tasked with saving lives and rebuilding communities wiped out by disaster. It also heightens concerns about the discretion Noem has given herself by personally handling all six-figure expenses at the agency, consolidating her power over who wins and loses in the pursuit of federal relief dollars, experts said.”
DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told ProPublica that the pier decision “has nothing to do with politics,” since Noem has visited the sites of other disasters. “Your criticizing the Secretary’s visit to the Pier is bizarre as she works to fix this issue for more than 1 million visitors that used to visit the pier,” she said.
A visualization of the restored Naples pier. (Rendering: City of Naples)
The Fort Myers Beach pier
The Fort Myers Beach pier before and after Hurricane Ian. (Photos: WINK News/Matt Devitt)
Noem’s treatment of Naples can be contrasted with the experience of Fort Myers Beach, just 20 miles northward, whose tourist pier was also wrecked in Hurricane Ian.
Fort Myers Beach, like Naples, is a tourist-oriented, incorporated town on the Gulf of Mexico, although appealing to much smaller and less wealthy population than Naples, both in permanent residents and visitors. Its population is about 5,300 people.
This is the town where Hurricane Ian made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane and it did horrendous damage, virtually scraping buildings from their foundations all along the sea front and well inland.
The damage included its tourist pier. (Most towns along this stretch of coastline have piers because in their early days they were supplied entirely by boat.)
Like Naples, Fort Myers Beach officials are also trying to rebuild their pier.
Also, like Naples, Fort Myers Beach officials applied for FEMA funding. They were granted funding but only for the pier’s original structure. However, the city wants to expand and lengthen the pier, adding 415 feet so that it extends 1,000 feet into the water. They also want to widen it by four feet so it spans 12 feet.
This is expected to cost the city $17.1 million and the new parts won’t be covered by FEMA. To make up the shortfall, on Sept. 16, the Lee County Commissioners voted to seek $7 million from the Gulf Consortium, which manages compensation for the British Petroleum (BP) Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010. That money is provided under the RESTORE (Resources and Ecosystems Sustainability, Tourist Opportunities, and Revived Economies) Act of 2012, administered under Florida’s State Expenditure Plan.
“The project is proceeding as planned and designed,” Lee County spokesperson Betsy Clayton told the Fort Myers Beach Observer and Bulletin. “The plan all along was to use FEMA and Tourist Development Tax [funds].”
However, if BP funds are approved, “this would reduce the need for Tourist Development Taxes,” Clayton told the newspaper.
Meanwhile, Fort Myers Beach and Lee County officials can only sit and wait to hear.
The restored Fort Myers Beach pier as conceived.(Rendering: Fort Myers Beach)
Commentary: Winners and losers
While Fort Myers Beach officials can lobby for their hoped-for BP funds to move the application process along, it seems doubtful that they can arrange a lunch with Kristi Noem and get the full funding over a weekend, as the far richer City of Naples did.
The incident also highlights why allegations of favoritism and political interference are—or should be—a sensitive issue and why inequitable distribution of government funding can be so disruptive.
What is more, both piers are very small disasters for FEMA and Noem amidst a very large array of natural events. As of Saturday, Sept. 27, FEMA was handling 58 major disasters and seven emergency declarations all around the United States and territories.
Complaints about slow responses and bureaucracy have always plagued FEMA.
However, this is nothing new. After every disaster people demand that aid arrive instantly, which, other than help from immediate neighbors, it never does. Government at all levels takes time to work, even when a response is urgent. As for its bureaucratic and procedural slowness, FEMA is bound by laws and regulations and has always had to ensure that money is properly accounted for, monitored and distributed.
But there are new reasons for FEMA delays and bottlenecks, chiefly the result of Trump and Noem’s own actions. FEMA has been battered by layoffs and staff dismissals, cuts to funding and Trump’s repeated attacks on it to the point of calling for its disestablishment.
After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, FEMA was reformed and streamlined, with two Floridians taking a leading role: R. David Paulison, a former Miami fire chief, and Craig Fugate, who had been Florida’s chief emergency manager. Under their administration and that of other DHS secretaries, FEMA was reworked to provide more timely responses and be completely evenhanded and apolitical in its actions and funding. It also made a major effort to prevent future disasters through preparedness, mitigation and increased resilience.
In the first Trump administration there were fears that Trump was politicizing responses, withholding aid to Democratic states like California and reducing preventive measures that responded to climate change challenges. Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation blueprint for a future administration, proposed that much more of the fiscal burden for disaster recovery fall on the states. (See “Project 2025 remake of FEMA would hit communities hard after disasters.”)
Once in office Trump has maintained the drumbeat of criticism and repeatedly threatened to eliminate FEMA as an agency. The agency’s layoffs and dismissals have hampered its functioning and ability to respond to disasters.
Noem from the beginning has been an aggressive operative for the Trump agenda, implementing cuts to the FEMA workforce, verbally attacking the agency, as in her Instagram post, and echoing Trump’s lies.
As the ProPublica article pointed out, she has also insisted on personally approving all FEMA expenditures over $100,000, making her personally responsible for them—and since $100,000 is a very small expenditure in government operations, it means she has to be personally involved in every small and petty purchase.
This requirement vastly slows down the process of approving any sort of aid or expenditures—unless a community can short-circuit the entire system by going straight to the Secretary as Naples did. Other communities awaiting assistance and with far greater damage have been left hanging, also hoping for the kind of aid that was previously processed through established, rationally conceived procedures.
It needs to be emphasized, as previously, that there are no allegations of illegality or criminality here and certainly not on the part of Naples City officials. They were confronted with frustrating delays and a lack of response from FEMA. They chose to take action, as should be expected of city officials.
According to the ProPublica article, Mayor Heitmann tried a variety of different avenues to address the issue. The City already employed some expensive Washington consultants to guide the process but this was unproductive. She wrote directly to FEMA, attempted to enlist Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), a Naples resident, and finally decided to go directly to Noem through Gursoy, who had introduced Heitmann to Noem at a private party when Noem was governor.
When she contacted Gursoy, he agreed to “get on it.”
It has to be said: It was a good idea that produced results.
Interestingly, nowhere did Rep. Byron Donalds (R-19-Fla.) appear to play a role in any of this even though his district encompasses both towns with their piers and he would logically be the first official to contact in pursuing the city’s interests in Washington.
If there is fault to be had it lies with Noem. In pre-Trump days, a secretary of Homeland Security when faced with this kind of request would have declined it. Perhaps he or she would have responded: “Thank you for this kind invitation. Due to the many requests and needs from deserving communities across the country, I have to respectfully decline. However, I will forward your request to the proper offices in FEMA.”
But that kind of rectitude and propriety is a thing of the past.
The bigger issues
Beyond problems created for FEMA aid and distribution caused by Trump, Noem and the Department of Government Efficiency when it was operating, Noem’s personal intervention in the Naples pier project illustrates much broader issues of governance, personalization and inequality among communities.
The United States has been unique in creating “a nation of laws, not men,” as President John Adams put it. Constitutionally, its institutions are intended to function according to law and objective facts, not the personal preferences of any one person.
That is not the case with Donald Trump who is openly and blatantly making governance about himself, whether that applies to prosecuting his perceived enemies, or levying tariffs, or silencing those who satirize him.
As Trump has driven toward a more authoritarian, dictatorial form of government that centers entirely on his personal decisions and predilections, his personalization of government operations is leaching down into lower levels of decisionmaking.
This is glaringly evident in the case of the Naples pier. Noem may say that she’s heroically cutting red tape and taking action—and she may actually think it—but it also sends a signal to all other distressed communities around the country that the way to get disaster aid is not to follow the law and procedure but to somehow reach her personally, with paid travel and a nice dinner (at the least). It announces that emergency management decisionmaking now officially depends on her whims and personal preferences. It also announces that the American people and their communities cannot depend on a government that previously responded to their distress as one of its primary duties.
There has always been an element of personality and lobbying in government operations, whether in the legislative or executive branches. It’s what created the vast lobbying industry that exists today at all levels of government. But lobbying and advocacy was always peripheral to the government’s essential decisionmaking. Now, with Trump’s personalization and weaponization of government, it’s central to it.
In 1655 King Louis XIV of France is reputed to have said, “L’État, c’est moi!”—“I am the state.” It has gone down in history as the ultimate expression of personal power. The American revolution was an explicit rebellion against that philosophy. The state was the Constitution, an expression of “We the people”—all Americans.
As Trump drives toward becoming the embodiment of the American state, situations like Noem’s favoring Naples, or for that matter Tom Homan, head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) taking cash for favors and then escaping any kind of law enforcement, are becoming more common.
The Naples pier is just one small example of the increasing personalization of government in America today. It’s also the embodiment of increasing stratification between affluent, well-connected communities and more obscure, modest and poorer communities in getting attention paid to their needs by a government originally formed to be of them, by them and for them.
So, while the focus in this instance may be on two closely-placed towns and their structures of planks and concrete jutting out into the waters of Florida, the gulf between them is actually broader, vaster, more profound—and, unfortunately, growing.
Your morning coffee and your orange juice are the weapons.
Taste them, savor them, pay attention to their flavors and subtleties and enjoy them to the fullest because they’re going to be taxed, perhaps beyond what you’re willing to pay for them in the future. What was once ordinary and routine is about to become rare and precious.
And all this is because President Donald Trump is trying to reverse a just judgment against a coup plotter, insurrectionist and would-be dictator in a land far away.
Last Thursday, Sept. 11, while Americans memorialized the terrorist attacks of 24 years ago, the Brazilian Supreme Federal Court found Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s former president, guilty of plotting a military coup to overthrow Brazil’s democratic government.
He was sentenced to 27 years and 3 months in prison. The likelihood is that Bolsonaro will have to serve his time—the Brazilians aren’t kidding around.
Their judgment is informed by a 21-year experience of military dictatorship. They know what it means to be governed autocratically and to lose their freedoms. So when a politician plots to overthrow a democratically-elected government and sends a mob to destroy the legislative branch of government, they know that they have to respond firmly and decisively. The guilty party has to be punished fully because nothing else will preserve the rule of law, the Constitution and democracy.
Bolsonaro closely imitated Donald Trump in numerous ways.
His fate holds important lessons for the United States and for democracies that seek to defend themselves from demagogic authoritarianism. In this affair there are warnings—and especially lessons—for Americans.
As important, all Americans, including those living in Southwest Florida, are going to feel the effects of this battle.
The ‘Tropical Trump’
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and US President Donald Trump share a moment in the White House during a meeting on March 19, 2019. (Photo: Isac Nóbrega, Wikimedia Commons)
Bolsonaro was dubbed the “Tropical Trump,” a politician who took his cues from Donald Trump in both his election campaigns and governing. He was a demagogic, extremist populist campaigner and president who used insults and personal attacks both on the stump and through social media. He dismissed critical press coverage as “fake news.” He promised to “drain the swamp” of Brazilian politics.
Bolsonaro served as president from 2019 to 2023. In contrast to Trump he’d had a lengthy career in electoral politics before assuming the presidency. In 1990 after serving in the military he was elected to the city council of Rio de Janeiro and then to the Chamber of Deputies, the Brazilian House of Representatives. He served there for 27 years and became known for his conservatism. In 2018 he ran for president on a very Trump-like platform and won.
When he took office, Bolsonaro had to immediately deal with an economic crisis, which he did by favoring laissez fare economic solutions. He also rolled back protections for indigenous people and their lands and most notoriously stripped environmental protections from the Amazon rainforest in favor of agribusinesses.
He also advocated removing police restrictions to fight the country’s high crime rate. “A policeman who doesn’t kill isn’t a policeman,” he said while campaigning. In a country that had one of the highest rates of police killings in the world, he wanted greater lethality and defended the use of torture.
Once elected, Brazilian crime rates fell and the economy slowly recovered. But then, like Trump, Bolsonaro was hit with a curve ball: the COVID-19 pandemic.
Like Trump, Bolsonaro initially dismissed the disease, calling it “a little flu” and belittling media warnings as “hysteria.”
But as in the United States, COVID struck hard in Brazil. As in the United States voters didn’t forget. And like Trump, Bolsonaro paid the price when those voters went to the polls.
In the United States, Trump lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden. Unwilling to accept the results, on Jan. 6, 2021Trump incited his followers to attack the United States Capitol, overturn the election and lynch Vice President Mike Pence, when he wouldn’t de-certify the results as Trump wanted. After several hours of inaction by Trump, the insurrection was suppressed by police and National Guard troops.
Rioters storm the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
In Brazil, Bolsonaro lost the 2022 election to the progressive, trade-unionist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, universally known as Lula. Like Trump, Bolsonaro refused to accept the results and on Jan. 8, 2023 a pro-Bolsonaro mob stormed government buildings in the capital, Brasilia, demanding that Lula be deposed and a military coup be staged. Unlike Trump, Bolsonaro wasn’t in the capital—he was in Orlando, Florida, where he’d gone to avoid Lula’s inauguration.
Rioters storm government buildings in Brasilia on Jan. 8, 2023. (Photo: TVBrasilGov)
In the United States Trump faced condemnation and impeachment but was not removed from office and did not face any criminal charges or punishment for his role despite a detailed congressional investigation.
In Brazil, however, Bolsonaro was investigated and in November 2024 was indicted for attempting to mount a coup. He was charged in February 2025, placed under house arrest in August for violating court rules and tried in the Supreme Federal Court beginning on Sept. 2.
Last Thursday, Sept. 11, he was found guilty and sentenced to 27 years and 3 months (327 months) in prison.
Protecting the protégé
Having retaken the US presidency, Trump is actively trying to protect his Brazilian protégé using the full resources of the United States.
On July 31, Trump signed an executive order imposing 50 percent tariffs on Brazilian goods and declaring a national emergency regarding the country.
“The Order finds that the Government of Brazil’s politically motivated persecution, intimidation, harassment, censorship, and prosecution of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and thousands of his supporters are serious human rights abuses that have undermined the rule of law in Brazil,” it stated.
“By imposing these tariffs to address the Government of Brazil’s reckless actions, President Trump is protecting the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States from a foreign threat,” it stated.
The order declared that Brazilian court orders were tyrannical and arbitrary and charged that Brazil had tried to extort and coerce US companies into censoring free speech. It ordered revocation of the Brazilian Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Morae’s visa to the United States and any issued to his family.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio added his own imprecations on the day Bolsonaro was found guilty.
“The political persecutions by sanctioned human rights abuser Alexandre de Moraes continue, as he and others on Brazil’s supreme court have unjustly ruled to imprison former President Jair Bolsonaro,” Rubio stated on X. “The United States will respond accordingly to this witch hunt.”
Of course, Trump is willing to go further. On Wednesday, Sept. 10, the day before Bolsonaro’s verdict and sentencing, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt stated that “I can tell you this is a priority for the administration and the president is unafraid to use the economic might, the military might, of the United States to protect free speech around the world.” The comments were taken as a possible military threat against Brazil.
Defiance and costs
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and First Lady Rosângela Lula da Silva arrive in Brasilia for his 2023 presidential inauguration. (Photo: Gov. of Brazil)
Brazilian authorities are defiant in the face of Trump’s threats.
“A president of one country cannot interfere in the sovereign decisions of another country. If he chooses to take further action, that’s his problem. We will respond as measures are taken,” Lula told a local television station.
“Threats like the one made today by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in a statement that attacks Brazilian authority and ignores the facts and compelling evidence in the case files, will not intimidate our democracy,” Brazil’s foreign office said on X.
The potential impact of the dispute on US-Brazilian trade could be considerable. Last year trade between the two countries was worth an estimated $127.6 billion, according to the US Trade Representative. What is more, the US runs a surplus, with exports worth $49 billion and imports worth $42.3 billion and until now that surplus was growing. The US exports aircraft parts, refined oil, and gas turbines to Brazil and Brazil exports crude oil, coffee, unfinished iron and beef to the United States.
The Brazilian government’s stance against Bolsonaro’s attempted insurrection and coup is informed by some harsh history in the tropical nation.
On April 1, 1964, Brazil’s top military commanders launched a coup against Brazilian President João Goulart and the parliamentary republic he headed, which they alleged was heading in a communistic direction. They established a military dictatorship that engaged in all the abuses for which dictatorships are known: extrajudicial disappearances, use of torture, media censorship and suspension of due process, among other crimes.
At first tentative, as the years went on the dictatorship became harder, deeper and more intrusive. The Constitution was suspended, Congress and state legislatures were dissolved and the civilian justice system was replaced with a military one that was more repressive, arbitrary and merciless. The dictatorship reached down into everyday life, into the school system, the humanities and the arts.
Brazil’s dictatorship lasted 21 years, until 1985. Despite its early fiscal successes and an economic “Brazilian miracle,” it ultimately collapsed amidst economic stress, inflation and popular demand for a return to democracy. In 1985 an election was held to select a new president. A new, democratic Constitution was approved in 1988.
It is this dictatorship that Brazilians remember as they protect their democratic government and Constitution. They know what dictatorship means in a way that Americans, who have never experienced one, do not. It gives an urgency and determination to their administration of justice and prosecution of Bolsonaro. It also makes it likely that he will actually have to pay the penalty for his duly established crimes.
By contrast, in the United States, Trump was impeached for his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection but never removed or criminally prosecuted. Without a historical memory of loss of democracy and freedom, American politicians presumed that after 2021 Trump was neutralized and no further effort was required to defend democracy. Clearly they were wrong.
Now, in addition to assaulting democracy, due process, civilian control and the Constitution, Trump is attempting to undermine democracy in a democratic Brazil and defend a rogue president who assaulted the nation’s fundamental institutions in the same way he himself did in the United States.
The United States has played an intrusive and sometimes contradictory role in Brazil. It supported the coup and its plotters in 1964. Brazilians fought back and at one point the US ambassador was kidnapped by resistance fighters but released unharmed. Then, in the mid-1970s the United States, under President Jimmy Carter, condemned human rights abuses and suspended military aid.
The current situation harkens back to the bad old Cold War days of covert American interference in the sovereign, independent processes of otherwise democratic states. Only now, instead of defending American democracy against communism, Trump’s regime is overtly and blatantly trying to protect a convicted criminal, would-be dictator and, arguably a traitor against the application of justice in his own country—and Trump is no doubt fearful of a similar fate in his own case.
Commentary: The breakfast battle
So why should Americans—and specifically Floridians—care what happens in a land far away?
Actually, everyday Americans will feel the pain of this trade war and pay its price—and they’ll feel it every single morning.
That’s because when it comes to coffee, the United States gets 35 percent of its coffee from Brazil, the largest portion of all the coffee that comes in from Latin America. (Colombia comes in second, with about 27 percent of US coffee imports.)
From the moment that Trump first announced tariffs on coffee in April, exporters and people knew that the cost of coffee was going to rise precipitously.
“If Brazilian coffee suddenly becomes 50% more expensive in the US, roasters will have little choice but to look elsewhere. But none have the scale, pricing consistency, or logistical muscle of Brazil. This could lead to shortages and price hikes, not just in the US, but globally,” warned Sarah Charles, writing for the trade website Coffee Intelligence.
But the impact on coffee is as nothing compared to the impact of Trump’s tariffs on orange juice—because Brazil provides over half of US orange juice.
Trump’s tariff is likely to drive the price of retail orange juice up by double digits. Ironically, this is likely to badly affect the Florida citrus industry, already declining because of citrus greening, migrant worker crackdowns and hurricane damage. Indeed, as Florida production has declined, the middle processing and distribution companies have become more dependent on Brazilian imports.
With all orange juice prices set to rise because of the tariffs and a likely decline in demand as a result, purchase of Florida’s orange products will also fall. The new punitive tariffs will also decrease processing companies’ profits and disrupt the supply chain.
When Trump first announced tariffs in April, Brazilian orange juice was exempted. However, now that he’s specifically targeting Brazil for political reasons, those exemptions are off the table, unless he changes his mind again.
There is a real possibility that the addition of Trump’s trade war on Brazil, coming on top of all its other woes, will bring Florida’s citrus industry to an end.
But for the everyday American, it’s in the two most common breakfast staples that Americans will feel the most immediate pain of Trump’s Brazilian tariff tantrum. After a century of promoting orange juice as a refreshing and healthful way to start the morning, orange juice may be priced out of reach. Those office coffee breaks that everyone took for granted may be a thing of the past, along with the stereotypical office coffee pot sitting on the burner all day reducing the liquid inside to a caffeinated sludge.
Coffee has been a politically-charged beverage throughout American history. In 1773 following the Boston Tea Party and protests against an English tea tax (which was a tariff), Americans switched to coffee in a show of patriotic protest. The change held and Americans have been coffee drinkers ever since.
Now a domineering president has unilaterally put a new tariff on coffee as well as other vital imports in an effort to protect and defend a fellow insurrectionist and would-be dictator against his own people’s justice and democracy.
One of the key complaints against King George III in the Declaration of Independence was that he was “cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world” and imposing taxes without the peoples’ consent.
Perhaps it’s time for another protest against an unfair, unrepresentative and damaging tariff imposed by fiat, for, as the Declaration of Independence put it: “A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”
Just remember that as you drink your next morning orange juice and down your breakfast cup of coffee.
On a personal note: Doing business with dictators
I first became aware of Brazilian trade issues when I worked as the international trade reporter for the newspaper Defense News.
In that capacity I made the acquaintance of José Luis Whitaker Ribeiro at a trade conference.
Ribiero was chief executive officer of the giant Brazilian firm, Engesa. In the days before e-mail, we would communicate by fax. He was always prompt in responding, was always on the record, never held back, and provided a revealing and often humorously sarcastic insight into his business and his competitors. In other words, a perfect source.
An engineer, he and colleagues had founded Engesa to manufacture oil equipment in 1958. When the United States embargoed military supplies to the Brazilian dictatorship under President Jimmy Carter, Engesa began producing equipment for the Brazilian military.
But Engesa’s biggest boost came in 1979 when Saddam Hussein invaded Iran. Engesa became a major supplier to the Iraqi military and its business boomed as it churned out tough, reliable, easily operated military vehicles. It even began developing its own main battle tank, which required a major investment.
The Iran-Iraq War ended in 1988 and Engesa presented Hussein with the bill, which was considerable.
And, as Ribeiro told me, Hussein simply decided not to pay. He just didn’t feel like it. He casually refused to do it. There was no collection agency in the world that could make him.
Engesa’s business collapsed. It would never recoup its investments. It wouldn’t be paid the billions it was owed. In 1993 it declared bankruptcy.
That experience provides yet another insight into the nature of dictatorships, wherever they’re located. No matter how much contractors, corporations and related parasites may believe they’re going to profit from a dictatorship, there’s a lesson to be learned.
The Paradise Progressive 